Whereas, women are disproportionately appointed into non-Senate faculty positions at the University of California, e.g., Senate faculty are one-third women, while lecturers are one-half women; and

Whereas, on average, Latina women in the United States are paid 54 cents, Black women are paid 63 cents, white women are paid 80 cents, and Asian women are paid 85 cents for every dollar a man makes; and

Whereas, Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) are the primary assessment tool used to evaluate teaching by non-Senate faculty at the University of California; and

Whereas, voluminous research demonstrates that SET are irretrievably biased against women and faculty of color, perpetuating deeply-entrenched sexist and racist hiring, promotion, and salary-setting practices; and

Whereas, non-Senate faculty who lack the academic freedom protections of tenure and are particularly vulnerable to biased, unfair, and/or politically-motivated attacks in SET are unjustly incentivized to dumb down their pedagogy, teach in less challenging ways, and avoid innovation in order to attain high SET ratings; and

Whereas, SET create disincentives to innovative and challenging pedagogy, ultimately harming the quality of education students receive;

Therefore, be it resolved, that the California Federation of Teachers commission a statistical analysis of per-course pay at the University of California in order to determine whether there are gender and/or race-based pay gaps within UC-AFT’s non-Senate faculty instructional unit and between UC-AFT and Senate faculty, and, if so, how wide they are; and

Be it further resolved, that CFT lobby the UC Regents and the California Legislature to prohibit the use of SET in the evaluation of non-Senate faculty as a way of fighting against sexism and racism and preserving academic freedom and high educational quality at the UC.
 

• Passed as Resolution 8 on March 25, 2018
• Submitted by the University Council-AFT