Dr. Lisa Delpit is beginning a professorship at Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus in the middle of a rancorous dispute between faculty and administrators.
The debate has centered on the chancellor’s appointment of the renowned scholar and author to a $120,000-a-year position that was supposed to have been funded by a $2 million endowment.
Problem is: No money was raised for the endowment, so state funds will pay her salary in the College of Education as dozens of employees are being laid off amid budget cuts.
The average full professor at Southern earns about $60,000 a year, according to faculty senate President Sudhir Trivedi, who, with the support of other faculty, has launched an attack against Delpit’s appointment.
Delpit, a MacArthur “Genius Award” recipient, has written extensively on urban education. Trivedi said he has great respect for Delpit’s accomplishments but said the way administration handled her appointment and salary are “demoralizing” amid such hardship.
“We need professors to teach classes and we don’t have the money to pay them. We have facilities that need repairs and there is no money for that. This is a case of misplaced priorities,” Trivedi said, adding that it is an example of “reckless” decisions made at the administrative level without input from faculty. SUBR Chancellor Kofi Lomotey defends his decision to hire Delpit and said the system’s board of supervisors and President Ronald Mason approved the appointment.
“My argument is that at the same time we are downsizing, we have to be looking to the future,” Lomotey says. “In my mind it is a critical hire because the challenges we face in our College of Education dictate that we need a new remedy and she is a critical part of that remedy.”
