June 7, 2010. FSU Faculty Senate President and Trustee Eric Walker petitions AAUP on administration’s 2009 layoff of 55 tenured and tenure-track faculty members.

Tallahassee Democrat, 06/07/10

Eric Walker, a member of the English Department at Florida State University for 26 years, specializes in 18th and 19th century British literature.

But for the past year, while also publishing “Marriage, Writing and Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen after war” – a 304-page critically well-received book – Walker has been intensively studying university politics.

Walker, with a professorial salt-and-pepper beard, is beginning his second year as president of the Faculty Senate, which means he is also a member of FSU’s Board of Trustees, the body that oversees the operation of the university.

At Walker’s first BOT meeting as a voting member, last June 18, the board unanimously approved a three-year budget that called for laying off 21 tenured and 34 tenure-track faculty – an unprecedented move in the wake of more than $82 million in reduced support from the state.

Read more at Tallahassee Democrat