History professor strikes a new deal, all his own

Paul Kennedy, history professor and Director of International Security Studies, sent an e-mail last week telling his graduate students that he was taking a leave of absence in spring 2002. He would not teach his popular lecture again, he informed them, unless he had assurance that any teaching assistants for the class would not go on strike.

ROBERT LISAK/YH Paul Kennedy declines to teach a lecture in order to avoid the repercussions of a TA strike.

This e-mail, which Kennedy considered harmless, soon made its way around campus. According to Kennedy, it reached "everyone and his aunt," angering members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), the organization seeking unionization for graduate students, and the National Labor Relations Board, which considered bringing a lawsuit against Kennedy and Yale.

Kennedy said his fear of a graduate student strike comes from the grade strike of 1996, when graduate students administered final exams but withheld the grades from students and professors.

"Luckily my class went through that relatively unharmed," Kennedy explained. "But a lot of undergraduates were really upset, and some of those seniors who were applying to graduate schools got screwed over. I didn't want to have to deal with that situation, so I opted not to teach a large lecture class with TAs."

Kennedy claimed his statement was fair because it merely expressed a preference. "Since GESO believes that it is one of their rights to strike, I stated my right not to teach my big lecture course until I knew that it would not be disrupted," he said. "I have a choice of which courses to teach, and I'm just indicating to my graduate students that I'll wait to teach my lecture course until I'm pretty sure that it won't be interrupted."

Kennedy also defended his position as being totally legal because he never threatened to fire any TAs that did not comply with his message. "It's not as if I was already a professor with six TAs, and that I suddenly turned and put pressure on them," Kennedy said. "Then I think they would have a stronger case, because it would be like I was threatening their employment. You see, it's all hypothetical."

Kennedy cited the First Amendment as giving him the right to make his statement with impunity. "This is a country with amendments to the Constitution to support free speech," Kennedy argued. "If I say that I'm not going to teach a certain one of my courses because I'm worried about strike circumstances, they can't really throw a legal book at me or at Yale, I imagine."

Kennedy said that he and GESO clearly disagreed on the spirit in which the statement was issued. "I never wan-ted to rock the boat, or to make inflam-matory anti-union statements," he explained. "GESO sees this as a threat to them and their right to strike, and I see it as a polite notice indicating my personal preference of which courses I teach."

Kennedy feels that much of GESO's negative response to his e-mail arises from the fear that if other professors make statements like Kennedy's, graduate students will become reluctant to join the group. "GESO is organizing the students for a particular vote on unionization," Kennedy commented. "But I think it got them worried that if more and more senior professors like myself said we were worried about unionization and striking, then a lot of the new graduate students would vote against membership in GESO."

Nevertheless, Kennedy reports that, to his surprise, he has received no personal feedback from GESO. In fact, Kennedy has recieved many more positive than negative responses to his e-mail. "I got quite a number of e-mails from faculty and former students kind of applauding what I said...but none from a GESO member saying `we'd like to come and debate this with you.'"

Over all, Kenn-edy feels that GESO would have some tro-uble depicting him as an adversary of graduate students in order to turn students against him. "Pretty well everybody here knows that over my 17 years here I have spent and spend more time with my graduate students than anyone else: advising them, getting them funds, raising money for them, taking them to the theater, taking them to dinner, taking them out to my cottage in Branford so we can go swimming in the summer," Kennedy said. "So you don't have a dogmatic, right-wing professor who dislikes graduate students, and I think that this is awkward for GESO because I am simply not the right target."

More than anything, Kennedy hopes that he can put this behind him. "I'm teaching my undergraduate seminar this spring, I'm teaching my graduate seminar in the fall, and I'm going on leave next spring," he said. "Maybe by that time the whole thing will be over, one way or another."

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