Carrying signs saying, “clearly you’re not justice wonks,” students protested the AU orchestra director’s tenure denial and the slow grievance process Wednesday.
Jesus “Manny” Berard has been the director of the American University Symphony Orchestra for the past five years and was hired as a tenure track faculty member in 2004.
Berard received a letter from the administration denying his tenure appointment in May.
Berard missed the 21-day deadline to submit a grievance and has since submitted an appeal to waive the deadline, according to Peter Starr, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
If the Faculty Senate accepts the appeal, he can file a formal grievance. The Faculty Senate hears grievances in the order they were formally filed with the committee, Starr said, so other grievances will most likely be heard first.
The grievance committee has not yet met this semester because there was a vacancy on the committee that was not filled until last week.
Josiah Lambert, a 2008 Kogod School of Business alumnus, is one of the founders of the “Keep Professor Berard” group.
Lambert said that a year or two prior to Berard’s denial of tenure, he was told to achieve greater scholarship through further study and publication in notable music journals and to improve his career outside of the University.
In between that recommendation and his final file review, Berard received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, published articles in notable music journals and became involved with the D.C. Youth Orchestra, Lambert said.
Protest
The students and professional musician Roger Whitworth, who also plays in the AU Symphony Orchestra, marched around campus for nearly two hours, playing pieces like the “Rocky” theme song and waving signs that said, “Save AU Music,” “Keep Prof Berard at AU” and “clearly you’re not justice wonks.”
Berard’s daughter Julia, a high school sophomore, attended the protest. She said she was initially confused about the denial. She said her father is truly dedicated to his job and spends hours on his BlackBerry, answering students’ e-mails.
Julia said her father is looking into jobs in Georgia, Florida and Connecticut, but her mother has a job in D.C. Julia said she may have to move or be separated from her father.
Students sent 82 individual letters and a form letter with 93 signatures to various administrators, including AU President Neil Kerwin, Provost Scott Bass and Starr on June 21, according to a flier distributed by the protesters.
Bass and Starr responded in a June 30 letter detailing the tenure process, saying the University’s decision is final.
“We want to assure you that this outcome in no way signals American University’s lack of support for the AU Symphony Orchestra in particular and our music program in general,” the letter said.
The letter also added that AU is looking for a new conductor for the AU Symphony Orchestra. But this search is contingent on Berard’s appeal and grievance process. If his grievance is successful, the search will be terminated because he will continue to fill the position. If he is unsuccessful in having his grievance heard or accepted, the search will be taken off hold.
Monday, Starr said the conductor search is on hold, pending the decision made in Berard’s appeal and possible grievance.
Meeting
At the same time as the protest Wednesday, students and administrators were discussing Berard’s tenure denial at a meeting.
Four of the students involved with the “Keep Professor Berard” group that organized the protest went to the meeting with the administrators Nov. 10.
The meeting was scheduled in the hopes of creating a “wider discussion with all those students concerned about the case,” Starr said in an e-mail.
Amanda Grossman, the AU Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster and a senior in the School of International Service, was one of the four students at the meeting.
“We were trying to express the fact that we wish this decision could be reconsidered,” Grossman said.
At the meeting, the four students expressed their belief that Berard’s tenure decision was incorrect, while the administrators outlined for them the stages of a tenure review and the appeal process of a tenure denial.
“While students — undergraduate or graduate — have no voting role in the tenure process, their needs are an important touchstone in any review,” Starr said.
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