Kerri Johnson and the Morally-Bankrupt UCLA Administration March on in their Endless Denial of Due Process to Stamp out the Last Remaining Vocal Conservative Voice on Campus Earlier this week, Kerri Johnson convened and led a meeting to discuss and vote on Professor Fink's future at UCLA. Johnson then drafted a letter describing the meeting and tallying the votes. Conspicuously, the votes were a dead-tie: 3 faculty members voted to deem Fink "excellent", 3 faculty members voted to deem Fink not excellent, and 3 faculty members abstained from voting all together. It's not difficult to surmise who voted "no". There were three voting faculty members identified as biased at the outset of the Excellence Review process. Is it a coincidence that three faculty members also voted to eradicate Fink from their Department? Unlikely. Fink's requests for two of the biased faculty members, Kerri Johnson and Greg Bryant, to recuse themselves from voting were met with staunch resistance from the Department. Would the Department adamantly oppose their recusal if Johnson and Bryant were planning to abstain anyway? Of course not. This assumption is admittedly educated conjecture, but since voting occurs in a star chamber with secret ballots, why would Johnson (whose dishonesty tainted Fink's entire Excellence Review) abstain if she could secretly vote "no" anyway and never get caught? Kerri Johnson and Greg Bryant are welcome -- encouraged, even -- to speak out if this is wrong: they can easily do so by posting a response to this petition. (I wouldn't wait with bated breath for a response, though.) Why was the vote 3-3-3? Johnson and Bryant were presumably hoping to deem Fink not excellent using Bryant’s distorted and dishonest course evaluation letter. Unfortunately, their attempt fell flat on its face. Prior to the meeting, Fink prepared a 48-page response document (available via Campus Reform at the link below) that articulated seriatim nearly every instance in Bryant’s letter (and six dubious student evaluations likely authored by students with whom Jane Bitar had curried favor) that was dishonest, not credible, or irrelevant to the criteria for excellence. This left the committee with no ‘usable’ negative information about Fink's teaching. As a result, Johnson's letter effectively concedes that Fink is an excellent lecturer based on the five criteria promulgated by the University of California's collective bargaining agreement for lecturers. The letter states that Fink leads the pack with respect to course and instructor ratings. (An independent analysis of students' BruinWalk reviews of Communication Studies faculty shows that Fink is the single best instructor in the department.) Faced with a mountain of favorable evidence, Johnson's letter attempted to discredit the "weight" of the quantitative evidence — albeit not very well. Ignoring the fact that biased Kerri Johnson shouldn’t have led the meeting or authored the letter, her letter is problematic because it fails to articulate a recommendation for the school to adopt. Combined with a deadlocked vote (of course, something uncontemplated by UCLA's labor policies), it appears that the decision will now be punted to Laura Gomez, UCLA's Dean of Social Sciences. Before you rejoice in the fact that this matter will be transferred away from Johnson's dirty hands, remember one thing: Laura Gomez, too, was deemed biased at the outset of the Excellence Review process. An optimist would hope that Gomez, a lawyer, would at least adhere to policy and render an impartial and fair decision. In reality, Gomez has been involved in this Kafkaesque farce from the very beginning. Stay tuned to this story as there will be many new developments in the forthcoming days.