math department challenged 1978-79

When I arrived in Athens in August 1980, the dust had not settled from an attempted coup of the math department the previous year. The main players in this drama were George Adomian, Jim Cantrell, Dean Jack Payne, and Vice-President Bob Anderson. 

Here are some references on these events: articles in The Athens Observer, the Georgia Supreme Court decision, and the Kaplansky Report on the UGA mathematical sciences.

For several years the Observer had been reporting on the controversies surrounding the Center for Applied Mathematics and its director George Adomian. Everything came to a head in the academic year 1978-79. A visiting committee submitted a report on the UGA mathematical sciences to Dean Payne and VP Anderson, who refused to release the report to the newspaper. The Observer sued VP Anderson for access to the report. Superior Court Judge Joe Gaines ruled in favor of the University, but on appeal the Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of the Observer.

This decision in “Athens Observer v. Anderson” (January 4, 1980) was a landmark in strengthening the Georgia Open Records Act.

A pointed statement from the decision: “That the officers who commissioned [the report] have not, or may not, act on its suggestions is not determinative.”

The “Report of the Visiting Committee to Review Mathematical Sciences at the University of Georgia,” though it was released to The Athens Observer in 1980, has not been widely distributed. In 2021 I went looking for a copy. Observer editor Pete McCommons didn't have one, and neither did Observer reporter John Toon (who filed the lawsuit). I ended up having to get a court order to obtain a copy from the Athens clerk of court!

Note: In 1979 Judge Gaines ruled that an edited version of the report would be released to the Observer. The Supreme Court decided that an "unexpurgated" version would be released. Presumably the strike-outs in the document are what UGA adminstrators wanted to censor.

In the Department of Mathematics, the report was known as “the Kaplansky Report,” since Irving Kaplansky, the pure mathematician on the committee, interviewed members of the department.