Tom Guild, Chair
Assembly of State Conferences
2109 Rushing Meadows
Edmond, OK 73013
Nomination of David Gruber (Truman State University)
for the Tacey Award:
David Gruber is an excellent
candidate for the Tacey Award, because he has achieved so much in his AAUP work
and because, with his remarkable spirit, he has influenced so many others to
take up this work. He began teaching at Truman State University in 1987, and he
became a member of AAUP in 1989. By the next year he was an officer of the
Truman chapter and was always a leader, serving as secretary, president,
newsletter editor, listserve manager, and member of the executive committee. He
soon assumed positions of leadership in the Missouri State Conference of AAUP as
well: vice-president 1993-97, president 1997-1999, listserve manager for ten
years beginning 1995,
editor of Missouri Academe (2001-2004,) and
webmaster.
In 1992 David began attending
national meetings as a delegate; in 1996 he became a member of the National
Council and served until 2002, including two terms on the Executive Committee.
He served on the Credentials Committee for 1997 and chaired the Resolutions
Committee for the 1998 and 1999 annual meetings. He served as chair of the
Committee on Organization, 2000-2003. He chaired the Membership Task Force
appointed in 2000. David also served on the Committee on Contingent Faculty
and the Profession from 1996 to 2002, and as a consultant to the committee,
2002-2005. His most enduring contribution to the Association and the profession
will be his work chairing the subcommittee that drafted AAUPs critical new
policy statement on contingent appointments and their effect on the faculty and
education. Working hard to increase communication and information for AAUP
members and all faculty, David has always done everything possible to increase
membership in and awareness of AAUP in his university, his state and region, and
at the national level. This listing of offices held only begins to relate his
accomplishments. For a better understanding of his influence, we can examine
some of the particular issues on which he provided leadership.
At Truman State University David has been a
tireless, persistent, and patient voice for academic freedom, shared governance,
and all efforts to keep decency and humanity foremost in academia and in modern
life. David and his AAUP chapter were instrumental in reshaping Truman’s Faculty
Senate to be more representative of the teaching faculty, first as a member of
the committee that helped shape the current structure of the Faculty Senate,
later as the primary author of the revised bylaws of this reformulated body.
Davids colleagues elected him to the Faculty Senate, where he represented the
Division of Social Science from fall 2003 until his retirement in early 2005.
Among other things, he chaired the committee that drafted policy on faculty
options to stop the tenure clock. He was elected President Pro Tem of the
Faculty Senate for 2004-05. As he helped inaugurate the new Senate regime in
fall 2004, David realized that illness would probably force him to resign his
Senate seat. When that retirement came, his fellow Senators (including some
long-time opponents on matters political in the academy) passed a resolution
that recognizes many of his achievements and contributions. Of course, they had
to honor AAUP activities and did so in a touching way:
he has been a prominent
leader in the American Association of University Professors at the university,
state and national levels;
he has worked extensively as the AAUP advisor to
the Missouri Association of Faculty Senates;
he is a relentless champion of
academic freedom and of faculty governance and a constructive critic of policies
that did not match those ideas.
At the Missouri Conference, David helped the
stalwarts and inspired a new generation of leaders, just as he did in his home
chapter. At the national level, he was probably most proud of his work on
Committee G, on Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Appointments, 1996-1999. He
chaired a group that drafted the recent AAUP Policy Statement on Contingent
Faculty Appointments <http://www.aaup.org/Issues/part-time/index.htm>. In this
policy, as in many things, Davids abilities to assess the situation critically
and to express the problems carefully and clearly are apparent.
On the webpage of the Philosophy
Faculty of Truman State University are these words about David Gruber. Those who
know him will immediately recognize his own style, as he describes his work:
His teaching and research interests are social and political philosophy and
contemporary continental philosophy with emphases on critical theory and the
stubbornly smoldering ruins of liberalism and modernity. Professor Gruber’s
teaching style stresses faithful but aggressively open and exploratory reading
of the texts that have defined our issues. This description, which assesses
issues current in his academic field, also typifies Davids ability to merge the
academic and the political, the theoretical and the humane. For all his
accomplishments in representing the best kind of activist professor, for being
an adviser whom all could trust, for being a model to inspire us even if few of
us can ever approach his level of commitment and achievement, David Gruber is
hereby nominated for the Tacey Award.
David K. Robinson
Professor of European History
Truman State University
President, Truman chapter of AAUP, 2003-present
Member at Large, Missouri Conference of AAUP, 2005-2007