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Image via After teaching at Chicago State University for 26 years, Haki Madhubuti decided to resign as a professor on Friday. Madhubuti, a celebrated poet who has founded Third World Press and oversees three charter schools and a private school in Chicago, stated that the primary reason for his resignation was due to the strained relationship between him and the president of CSU, Wayne Watson. Madhubuti had said in his remarks at the annual Gwendolyn Brooks Conference for Black Literature and Creative Writing on Friday that he had no choice but to leave and was ‘forced out” of his position at CSU: “Madhubuti said Watson demanded he teach four courses a semester — contrary to his contract — removed him from the paid staff of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center he founded, and reduced him to volunteer status with the master’s program in creative writing that he co-founded.” Watson has stated that he simply wanted Madhubuti to devote more time to actually teaching students and that the decision to resign was Madhubuti’s own, denying that he made Madhubuti leave his post at CSU. Regardless, it is a huge loss for the creative writing program at CSU. The relationship between Madhubuti and Watson did not start off as a good one, as Madhubuti wrote an open letter criticizing and questioning the way Watson was selected as the new president of CSU last summer.
Haki Madhubuti Resigns As Professor, Leaves CSU
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1 comment
April 6, 2010
Dr. Wayne Watson the President since October 09, has requested Madhubti to teach a full load and Watson is being slamed for doing so.
Haki Madhubuti is an estemeed and prolific writer. He has given a public resignation because Watson required accountability and a full teaching load of 12 hours. Previously Madhubuti has been teaching 3 hours a year for a full salary. Quite the job, wouldn’t you say. Enters new boss asking for accountability and responsibility and you claim that you are being mistreated. What kind of thinking is this?
Most people would be pleased to have a full salary for 3 hours of work per year. Wow, in these economic times, do the math. Madhubuti has had generous support from Chicago State University with an annual conference and the formation of The Gwendolyn Brooks Center.These are major achievements. In these hard economic times, state funding budget cuts, it would not be realistic to keep things the same. A touch of reality enters. No one on the planet, not even the President of the United States, can work only three hours a year and justify a full salary. No one is that distinguished.
Watson became President of Chicago State after much controversy but I wonder why didn’t Haki Madhubuti apply for the position? He seems to be saying if you break up my playground and make me work like the other Distinguished Professors, I will take my books and go home. Chicago State Unviersity is a teaching university and the most important thing a professor can do is teach, hands on. This is what great professors do.
Watson is providing leadership and asking his faculty to be accountable and responsible. What’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t you like to work for full salary and work only three hours a week. Wow. What a job.
Everyone should be able to see through this.
At 26 years and age 68 and a salary of $110,000, Don has maxed out in his pension and has so many outside interests that faarting around at CSU is no longer worth his while.
However, instead of retiring and showing the selfish side, he trumps up this mess in order to become a martyr, in the true tradition of the radical ’60s Mau-Maus.
Nice scam.
Will you
look into the face
of a student who has no Pell grant,
No MAPP grant,
and more loans
than is right or fair
And say that your work
is more important?
That students
must pay for non-teaching when
they desparately need to learn?
That is my poem of resistence!
To those who equate Don Lee (Haki) to other “Star” professors at other universities with respect to workload and salary, you are comparing apples to oranges.
Yes, this may be the case at major research instutitions where the “star” professor brings in millions of dollars in research grant dollars to the school or attacts the best and brightest PhD candidates to the school, adding to its prestige.
Don does/did not do either.
The only one that benefitted from Don’s work was Don (and his spouse).
Furthermore, one could say that Don started this whole mess with the poison pen open letter he wrote criticizing the process of the selection of the new president – not too smart for a man pre-emptively bites the hand that feeds him.
So you can count me as another who supports Dr. Watson on this one. This guy Haki has been pillaging CSU for years. Since he did not take a salary from 3rd World Press, you could say that CSU/the Taxpayers basically subsidized that business venture by providing him a one class load job, health insurance, office space and a platform to promote himself.
2008 information on Haki (Don Lee is his “slave” name) Madhubuti.
From: http://www.archive.org/details/StateUniversitiesOfIllinoisSalaries2008
Name: Lee, Don L
Title: Professor English
Start Date: 08/16/84
Salary: $110,928.00
Plus his spouse (Carol Lee) has a nice gig as a Professor at Northwestern University, so there will be no tag days for them.
He is 68 years old and can start enjoying his $90,000 plus per year pension and free lifetime health insurance.
At issue are the students of CSU and an administration, faculty and policies that prepare these students for professions and success in a growing global community. How many letters has this professor written, using his stature and name recognition in support of additional funding for CSU not associated with his department? How many elected officials has he lobbied on behalf of the university not associated with a program directly linked to him? The question is legitimate because Dr. Madhubuti wrote that his support extends beyond his department to the entire institution, its mission and all of its students.
There is no way anyone could accomplish so much beyond the university walls and have teaching be a priority. If being asked to earn his salary by taking on a full time teaching schedule after twenty-five years of the university supporting all of his outside endeavors is so distasteful that it warrants such indignation, then respectfully Dr. Madhubuti, just accept that your other initiatives have a greater priority and move on quietly. Don’t try to hurt the man who is trying to make the best use of university resources by paying professors a full time salary that actually teach full time.