·UCLA Weeding 101·

Wilfred Cude
Rural Route #2
West Bay, Nova Scotia
Canada B0E 3K0

19 April, 2010

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Vice Chancellor & Dean
UCLA Graduate Division
1237 Murphy Hall, Box 951419
Los Angeles, California
USA 90095-1419


Dear Dean Mitchell-Kernan:

     During the course of my research into graduate student misadventures, I encountered the website www.ucla-weeding101.info posted by Tom Wilde, a former graduate student at your university.  I must say the site makes very intriguing reading, and a compelling case for UCLA to reconsider Mr. Wilde's termination, despite the lapse of time since your Graduate Division made its decision to dismiss him.
     The fundamental facts seem clear.  On 30 August, 1996, the UCLA Graduate Division advised Mr. Wilde that his status as a graduate student was terminated, due to his "low grade point average."  As documents posted on Mr. Wilde's website show, the administration's records were in error at the time of his termination: the documents establish that he actually then had the requisite grade point average.  Shortly after the action of dismissal, two senior UCLA faculty members, Dr. Val Rust, Mr. Wilde's Head of Division in the Education Department, and Dr. Nick Blurton Jones, Mr. Wilde's graduate advisor, wrote to university administrators on behalf of Mr. Wilde, noting problems with aspects of the administrative action: and they jointly requested a review of the termination decision, a review that the university refused then to initiate — and, deplorably, a review the university still refuses to contemplate.
     In my estimation, Mr. Wilde is to be commended for steadfastly pursuing justice in this case.  Over the intervening years, he has appealed to a range of prominent academics for help, addressing senior faculty both within UCLA and beyond. He has approached the media, both on campus and beyond.  He has managed to sustain interest in his case, and he has not wavered in his campaign: and his website now takes that campaign onto the Internet, moving the situation into national and international realms of discourse.  I suggest to you that the vital interests of UCLA should now direct your university — a publicly-funded institution answerable to the taxpaying electorate — towards that long-overdue review.
     Throughout my own publications, I have remarked that our contemporary universities are the spiritual and intellectual progeny of the medieval monastic and cathedral schools.  Indeed, until about 150 years ago, most faculty at most universities were actual members of the clergy: and today's tenured faculty still possess much of the social status, institutional privileges and —yes— institutional powers of their clerical predecessors.  Courtesy of that history, the professional hierarchy of our universities is a shadow replica of what exists in today's established churches, with tenured professors as our secular priesthood and deans and presidents as our secular bishops and cardinals.  And, as in the established churches, our academic hierarchy is instinctively intolerant of criticism, however justified: and the default response to such criticism is secrecy and denial.
     Nonetheless, political democracy, the importance of wide discussion of public issues, and the growing influence of the Internet have all coalesced to render suspect, ineffectual and ultimately counterproductive the traditional stonewalling techniques of such institutions.  Allow me to address you directly, Dean Mitchell-Kernan, as one scholar to another: surely your most solemn and profound responsibility to the powerful and influential university you serve is to ensure the institutional dedication to fair and open inquiry remains inviolable.  Thus, Mr. Wilde's quest for justice is truly an opportunity for UCLA to become a leader in university ethics, should the university possess the acuity and courage to seize it.  Simply use the authority of your Vice Chancellor's Office to convene a review of this case, one conducted openly and with full participation of all interested parties, and then post the complete findings on the Internet.  No other alternative can possibly suffice here.  To quote The Economist, albeit from a different set of contexts, "there is no escape from the past;" moreover, "in free societies, selective memories cannot be imposed forever."
     You should know that I am entrusting Mr Wilde with a copy of this letter, to use as he deems fit.

With all good wishes,
/s/
Wilfred Cude