Good evening! I am honored to welcome Michael Parenti to UVM tonight. Michael will speak on The Hidden Ideology of Mass Media. For those who do not know his work, Dr. Parenti is a nationally known lecturer and scholar, author of numerous books and articles, a political analyst and a radical activist. Michael was the target of a political firing by the UVM Board of Trustees in academic year 1971-72, an extraordinary overturning of the usual procedures for academic reappointment. For the first and only time in UVM's history the trustees overrode the entire university evaluation process and fired (refused to reappoint) Parenti for failing to display "professional conduct," a requirement the trustees invented after the fact to justify their decision.

Michael had the support and approval of his colleagues in the Political Science Department, the College of Arts and Sciences and the University Senate. Administratively, he was supported by his Department Chairperson, the College Dean, and the President of UVM. Still, the trustees, who lacked any serious academic credentials, took it upon themselves to remove one of the most popular professors and published scholars on the campus. All the instances of so-called unprofessional conduct which the trustees gave as reasons for their actions where constitutionally protected acts of free speech.

UVM was placed under censure by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and by the American Political Science Association. An international legal defense fund was established on his behalf by academics all across the U.S. as well as from Europe and Canada. The case received national press attention from the Boston Globe to Time magazine to the New York Times.

In response, some UVM faculty pledged funds to create the Thomas Jefferson Chair of Critical Studies to keep Michael on campus while his case went to court. However, UVM's President Andrews caved in to pressure from the trustees to refuse to allow Michael's courses to be taught on campus or for credit.

It was a very sad day in the history of the university and a dismal episode in the struggle for academic and political freedom. While UVM recanted it's firing in 1954 of Alex Novikoff for his refusal to testify and name names before a witch-hunting Congressional Committee by giving him an honorary degree in 1983, it has sought to bury the Parenti firing. In the official history, The University of Vermont: The First 200 Years, (1991) the Parenti case is barely mentioned--and is seriously incomplete or inaccurate in what little it does note.

Dr. Parenti's return on the 25th anniversary of his firing will serve to remind members of the community how much we lost when the trustees went beyond their intended institutional role as financial advisers to the University and decided that certain ideas they found personally distasteful were not to be part of the universe of "free" discourse on the campus.

The Parenti Firing was a watershed event in UVM's history. Instead of opposing the trustees by what ever means were necessary, the faculty allowed itself to be sidelined by "waiting for it to be settled in the courts." After the firing of Parenti, the way was cleared to remove other left/anti-war/radical faculty, who as younger faculty had fewer academic publications.

A purge of the Philosophy Department was begun by the same administration which had been called to task by the trustees for forcing them to fire Parenti themselves. A Philosophy Department Chair was hired (again unprecedented given a 9-1 departmental vote against him) in order to fire or force out nearly the entire (full and part time) Philosophy faculty--Doug Bailey, Julia Bailey, Nancy Ford, Bob Rice, Gerry Anderson, Alan Paskow, Jim Corcoran, Bill Beckett, Jerry Swanson--finally even Pina Moneta, the only abstention in the vote against Philosophy Chair, was driven out. Having learned from the Parenti case, no reasons were given for the Philosophy firings so that litigation against UVM would be more difficult.

Before the decade of the 1970's ended Howard Waitzkin and Ralph Underhill in Sociology would also fall as causalities in the campaign to narrow the range of ideas, theories, and critique that can be safely entertained and discussed at UVM. The slamming shut of the academic job market in the mid-1970's and the continuing production of Ph.D.'s by those institutions and faculty that didn't want to lose their cheap labor as graduate assistants, created an immense reserve army of unemployed Ph.D's. With the crowds of unemployed academics waiting outside the gates of universities, it was easy to "clean house" of all those who held unorthodox or radical ideas.

The corporate managerial system has intensified its invasion and occupation of universities and colleges, bringing it more and more under the dominion of corporate imperatives, especially with the public de-funding of higher education in the last 15 years.

The demoralization and fear engendered at UVM by this repression persists today! Indeed one psychologist on our faculty suggested several years ago, that most of our faculty is "clinically depressed." To add insult to injury--after years of managing by demoralization--some administrators are now complaining about the high cost of mental health services for UVM employees.

Well, the cure for depression often requires focusing your anger appropriately at someone else. I propose that we honor Michael Parenti tonight by taking up the struggle he was blacklisted for at UVM a quarter of a century ago. In the lobby there are support letters that faculty and community members can sign in support of UEUVM, the staff union organizing effort. There is sign-up list for those who would like to be part of a faculty unionizing effort. And finally, there is a letter that all can sign, calling on the UVM President and Trustees to confer on Michael the apology and honorary degree that they gave to Alex Novikoff 14 years ago--even if in Michael's case is far too little, far too late....

I am proud to present Michael Parenti....

Will Miller

Assistant Professor of Philosophy (since 1969)