Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure covered a great deal of ground this past year, formulating some new policy statements and some revisions of existing ones. Two institutions were added to the censure list, while another was removed from the list when a new administration agreed to adopt AAUP-supported policies. In another case, AAUP investigation seems to have paved the way for an acceptable settlement. Yet again this year, our staff handled over a thousand cases and complaints; the statistics appear below. Again, as the examples accompanying this report will show, a fair number of the cases were satisfactorily resolved through the staff’s mediative efforts. The committee continues to monitor statistics and cases having to do with attempts to eliminate tenure. A subcommittee draft report titled Incentives to Forgo Tenure will come before our next meeting in November. Although the threat to tenure is very real, the instances of its outright abolition are few. But if tenure stands in principle, it is being undermined by the steady substitution of part-time, non-tenure-track appointments for tenured faculty positions. This is a major concern for Committee A and for the Association more generally. Since many of us see a relationship between the importation of corporate models of administration and the reduction of tenured faculty positions, we have also sought to address other implications of "corporatization," such as the corporate funding of academic research.
Judicial Business
Imposition of Censure
At its June meeting, Committee A considered two cases that had been the subject of reports published in Academe since the 1999 annual meeting. The committee adopted the following statements concerning these cases. The Council concurred in the recommendations, and in both instances censure was voted by the 2000 annual meeting.
Albertus Magnus College (Connecticut)
The report of the investigating committee discusses the nonreappointment and terminal suspension of a nontenured professor at Albertus Magnus College. On October 21, 1997, the president of this Roman Catholic institution notified the professor that his appointment would not be renewed beyond June 1999 and that, except for a prearranged study trip the following month, he was being relieved of his teaching and administrative duties. The president stated as cause for her actions that the professor had identified himself in a newspaper as a Catholic priest, contrary to his representation in 1991, when he joined the faculty, that he had left the priesthood. The president denied that the professor’s being openly gay had influenced her decisions.
The investigating committee found that the professor’s descriptions of himself in 1991 and 1997 as a priest on leave were accurate. The committee found further that the president viewed the presence of an openly gay priest on the faculty of Albertus Magnus College as a matter that had begun to attract wide public notice and that called for summary action.
The investigating committee noted that the president, prior to suspending the professor, had expressed concern that he cease teaching courses in religious studies, or, indeed, that he not teach at all and instead work in the administration. She had also expressed concern about the eventual publication of his research on sexual ethics. The committee concluded that, to the extent that the administration of Albertus Magnus College acted against the faculty member for reasons bearing on his teaching and research, it did so in violation of his academic freedom.
The investigating committee concluded that the administration of Albertus Magnus College denied the professor reappointment without affording him procedural safeguards to which he was entitled under the college’s official policies and the Association’s Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. Moreover, the committee concluded that the administration, in removing the professor from further teaching without having demonstrated adequacy of cause before a faculty hearing body, effectively dismissed him in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and in disregard of the college’s own policies.
Committee A recommends to the Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting that Albertus Magnus College be placed on the Association’s list of censured administrations.
University of Central Arkansas
The investigating committee’s report concluded that the University of Central Arkansas administration dismissed a tenured professor without having afforded academic due process as called for in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and in the university’s own stated policy.
In the case of a second professor, who was denied tenure by the administration when she was in her thirteenth year of service on renewable-term appointments but who has been retained at the university, the report found that the administration acted, at least in part, because of the high proportion of tenured faculty within her department. The report found further that the faculty member had served well beyond the maximum probationary period of seven years when she was evaluated for tenure. The report concluded that in this case the administration acted in disregard of applicable provisions of the 1940 Statement of Principles, of the Association’s Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments, and of the Association’s statement On the Imposition of Tenure Quotas.
In the case of a third and a fourth faculty member, lecturers who were notified in March of their eighth year of service that they would not be reappointed for a ninth year, the report found that they had been on the faculty too long to have had their services terminated by simple administrative action and that the actions had been taken without adequate notice, stated reasons, or opportunity for appeal. In these cases as well, the report concluded that the actions were in disregard of applicable provisions of the1940 Statement of Principles.
The report of the investigating committee went on to discuss a policy adopted by the administration and the board of trustees that allows faculty members to forgo the possibility of tenure in exchange for a higher salary. Committee A believes that this policy can be coercive and is indicative of a failure to appreciate basic principles of academic freedom and tenure.
Finally, the report concluded that the University of Central Arkansas denied the faculty its role in academic governance as enunciated in the Association’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
Shortly after the publication of the investigating committee’s report, the dismissed tenured professor, who had initiated litigation, reached agreement with the administration and the board of trustees on the terms of a financial settlement. The second professor, who had been denied tenure and faced termination of appointment, accepted a nonclassified staff position in another college of the university in exchange for a waiver of her legal rights to "any and all future litigation." She continues to carry out essentially the same duties as before. The administration has taken no action to address the issues raised by the cases of the third and fourth faculty members.
The administration’s settlement with the first professor and the arrangement it reached with the second professor have not resolved the substantial departures from principles of tenure, academic due process, and faculty governance discussed in the investigating committee’s report. These include (a) inadequate procedures for the dismissal of faculty; (b) inadequate safeguards of academic due process for faculty members who have served beyond the maximum probationary period of seven years; and (c) the lack of meaningful consultation with the faculty on matters such as changes in the tenure policy and academic reorganization over which the faculty, under the Statement on Government, should have primary responsibility. The administration’s response to the published report does not provide assurance that these standards will be observed in the event of future cases of the sort examined by the investigating committee.
Committee A recommends to the Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting that the University of Central Arkansas be placed on the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Postponement of Consideration for Censure
Regarding a third case that had been the subject of a recently published report, Committee A approved the following statement and, with the Council’s concurrence, presented it to the Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting:
MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine (Pennsylvania)
(Since the publication last month of the investigating committee’s report, developments have occurred that show promise of ensuring the continuance of tenure and of favorably resolving the immediate cases of concern. What follows is a summary of the investigating committee’s findings and of the new developments. Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure thinks it important to defer any annual meeting action at this time in order to allow opportunity for achieving the desired results.)
The report of the investigating committee concerns the termination of the appointments of more than a dozen tenured members of the basic-science faculty of the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine, then a component of the Allegheny University of the Health Sciences (AUHS), now MCP Hahnemann University. The terminations were in response to a declaration of financial exigency occasioned by a filing for bankruptcy by the health-care conglomerate of which the university then was a part. The investigating committee found that the university was in a state of exigency in fall 1998, when the administration decided to release tenured faculty members in the school of medicine. Despite well-established channels within the medical school for participation by faculty bodies in addressing compelling problems of faculty status, and several requests to be involved, the committee found that no such participation was permitted. No faculty body had an opportunity to contribute to decisions on whether terminations of tenured appointments were warranted, where within the overall academic program terminations should occur, or which criteria should be used to identify particular individuals for release. The faculty was thus deprived of the role provided for it in the Association’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
The investigating committee also concluded that the AUHS administration, in designating some tenured basic-science faculty members for release while at the same time retaining nontenured faculty colleagues in the same department, failed to demonstrate the basis or the necessity for the release of the former or the retention of the latter, thereby acting in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and in disregard of the Recommended Institutional Regulations.
In November 1998 the administration of Drexel University assumed the management of AUHS and its medical school as part of an arrangement to resolve the health-care conglomerate’s bankruptcy situation. The investigating committee found that, by all major academic indicators, save for its administration and control structure, the renamed MCP Hahnemann University is a continuation of the former AUHS. The committee concluded that the Drexel administration, in assuming its managerial role and in agreeing to accept substantial financial compensation for doing so, should have respected the tenure rights of the released faculty members. In the committee’s judgment, the administration failed to meet its obligations under the Recommended Institutional Regulations in this regard. It did not offer them other suitable work at the medical school for which they were potentially qualified or reinstate them to their positions when vacancies were advertised in their specialties and were filled in most cases by new appointees.
The affected faculty members, as a condition of receiving more than two weeks of severance salary and of retaining access to their offices and laboratories, were required to waive their right to a hearing assured them under the applicable AUHS regulations then in force and as called for in the 1940 Statement of Principles. Those faculty members thus lost any opportunity to contest the criteria for the termination of their appointments or to challenge why they in particular were singled out for release. They were also denied the severance salary called for in the Association’s Recommended Institutional Regulations, even after MCP Hahnemann’s financial picture had dramatically improved.
Late last month, subsequent to the publication of the investigating committee’s report, Drexel University president Constantine Papadakis convened a meeting of trustees, administrative officers, and faculty leaders from Drexel and MCP Hahnemann to discuss the report’s findings and conclusions. He then wrote to the Association, reaffirming MCP Hahnemann University’s commitment to academic tenure and stating that the administration was taking immediate steps to find continuing appointments for those faculty members whose cases remain unresolved. The president of the MCP Hahnemann AAUP chapter has expressed his support for the administration’s intended action. "I believe," he wrote, "that Dr. Papadakis and his colleagues are moving forward with good intentions to rectify all issues currently being considered for the AAUP censure of our institution. These actions should warrant the AAUP’s delaying, for one year, the censure issue [as it relates to] MCP Hahnemann and Drexel University."
Committee A is encouraged by these promising developments. The committee hopes and expects that suitable continuing appointments will soon result for the affected faculty members, and it will assist as appropriate in this regard. It makes no recommendation to the Eighty-sixth Annual Meeting regarding the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine and will report back to the annual meeting in 2001.
Removal of Censure
Committee A adopted the following statement recommending action with respect to the Illinois College of Optometry. The Council concurred in the recommendation, and the 2000 annual meeting voted to remove the censure.
Illinois College of Optometry
The investigating committee’s report dealt with the dismissal of two professors. The report concluded that the administration had dismissed them without providing for a hearing before a faculty committee, and had done so for reasons that violated their academic freedom. The report also discussed the system at the Illinois College of Optometry then known as "contract tenure," which was not tenure: faculty members could not hold appointments of indefinite duration but received only term appointments, renewable by the administration at its pleasure.
Shortly after the report was published, the two professors reached settlements with the college. Censure was imposed by the 1984 annual meeting after Committee A reported that the absence of a meaningful system of tenure at the college left academic freedom unprotected.
Members of the current college administration visited the Association’s Washington office soon after they took office and then corresponded with the Association’s staff about revisions in the college’s policies that would bring them into closer conformity with Association-supported standards. In November 1999 the administration provided the staff with the text of a substantially revised faculty handbook. The staff proposed three additional changes in the handbook, which the college accepted. The handbook provides that the college "subscribes to the principles and guidelines" that are set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. While the system of faculty appointment at the college is still called "contract tenure," the handbook states that "[a]ny faculty member who has been affiliated with the college for more than seven years and is issued notice of termination of appointment" will be afforded a hearing of record before an elected faculty body. The burden of proof now rests with the administration to demonstrate adequacy of cause for its action.
Late in April the chair of the committee whose investigation led to the 1984 censure visited the Illinois College of Optometry as the Association’s representative and held meetings with the administrative officers and members of the faculty. Writing in support of censure removal, he has stated that the "present administration bears absolutely no resemblance" to the previous administration, that the faculty of the college have an active and substantial role in the college’s internal operations, and that those faculty members with whom he met expressed no reservations about the state of academic freedom at the college. The president of the Association’s Illinois Conference has indicated that he too favors removing the censure.
Committee A recommends to the Eighty-Sixth Annual Meeting that the Illinois College of Optometry be removed from the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Legislative Business
At its meeting in November 1999, Committee A made a few editorial changes and then voted to approve the statement, On Collegiality as a Criterion for Faculty Evaluation, which had been published in the September-October issue of Academe with an invitation for comments. The Council subsequently adopted the statement as Association policy. The final text will appear in the 2000 edition of AAUP Policy Documents and Reports (the Redbook).
In discussing copyright issues at its November meeting, the committee took the position that it considers the lectures of professors as well as their writings to be their intellectual property.
Also in November, the committee approved changes in the wording of Regulation 4(e) in the Association’s Recommended Institutional Regulations, "Termination Because of Physical or Mental Disability," so as to have the regulation conform with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
At its meetings in November and again in June, Committee A approved revisions in "Association Procedures in Academic Freedom and Tenure Cases," a document that has served for decades primarily as a guide for investigating committees. It is to be published as an appendix in the 2000 edition of the Redbook.
At its June meeting, the committee also discussed a draft report, "On Dealing with Allegations of Misconduct," from a joint subcommittee of Committee A and the Committee on Professional Ethics. Committee A decided against going forward with the text as a policy document and instead recommended its publication as a column or advisory letter in Academe.
Early in the summer, voting by mail, the committee approved including a reference in the Association’s "Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment," when it is next published in the 2000 edition of the Redbook, to Committee A’s 1995 statement, "The Applicability of the Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment to All Full-Time Faculty on Renewable Term Appointments."
Other Activities
Committee A at its November meeting formulated a statement to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops urging the bishops to defer action on the implementation norms for the Apostolic document Ex Corde Ecclesiae pending further discussion. The bishops, paying no heed to the committee’s communication and to similar urgings from Catholic academic organizations and learned societies, voted by an overwhelming majority in support of the implementation norms. The norms, which we see as a potential threat to academic freedom and institutional autonomy, were approved by the Vatican in May.
In another action taken at the November meeting, Committee A approved a statement, which the Council subsequently adopted, supporting a September resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in response to a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to remove references to evolution and cosmology from the state’s education standards. The resolution called on the citizens of Kansas "to restore evolution and cosmology to the state curriculum."
Having discussed its relations with the Committee on College and University Government, Committee A in November accepted the governance committee’s recommendations that the practice of briefing investigating teams on issues of governance be continued and that prepublication texts of reports dealing with governance issues be sent to the governance committee membership.
Increasing concerns regarding the corporate funding of academic research led the committee in November to authorize appointment of a subcommittee to revisit this area. The subcommittee determined that current issues of academic freedom raised by corporate funding should be explored together with other constituencies, particularly business, academic administration, science, and medicine. The subcommittee accordingly convened a meeting in May, attended by representatives from the Association of American Universities, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Chemical Society, the Government-University-Industry-Research Roundtable, and the Business Higher Education Forum. Officials of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society have also indicated interest in addressing the issues raised by corporate funding of academic research, and a joint statement is under consideration.
Also of increasing concern for academic freedom in research has been the expanded activity of Institutional Review Boards, beyond research bearing on human life into research in the social sciences and history as well as more intense activity across the board. The staff of Committee A convened meetings this winter and spring attended by representatives of the American Anthropological Association, the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Oral History Association. A report is in preparation.
In Appreciation
Arthur O. Lovejoy, a founding member of Committee A in 1915 and indeed the founder of Committee A’s method of operation, served on the committee for twenty-eight years. For the first half of the twentieth century, all would agree, when one thought of academic freedom and tenure, one thought of Lovejoy.
When one thinks of academic freedom and tenure in the second half of the twentieth century, one thinks of the person who was affiliated with Committee A even longer than Lovejoy: Walter P. Metzger. Initially appointed to the committee in 1958, Walter has submitted his resignation after forty-two years. My own service on the committee began in 1996, and thus I had the privilege of gaining some firsthand experience with the range and breadth of Walter’s knowledge and the depth of his commitment to academic freedom. Rather than try to describe that contribution, I will quote from a letter to Walter by a previous committee A chair who had the good fortune to work with Walter from the beginning:
Committee A has been the chief repository of principle in the Association, and perhaps in the academic profession as well, and for these many years you have been a strict but benevolent voice of conscience. If the committee has not always followed the dictates of your conscience, its defections have been exceptional, and I cannot recall its ever reaching an important decision without close attention to your advice. It is one of the special pleasures of Committee A membership that your advice always comes, not only with precision, but with a proper seasoning of similes and metaphors. Surely, if there were a Committee A Hall of Fame, your name, along with Arthur Lovejoy’s, would lead all the rest.
In Conclusion
I could not conclude this report without commenting on the enormous service provided to the committee by the office staff. We welcome the addition of Martin Snyder to those ranks. And we deeply regret the departure of Jonathan Alger, who provided terrific legal counsel for us. Donna Euben, who replaces him, has already demonstrated her skill, and we are pleased to be working with her. The committee has a rich agenda already taking shape for its November meeting. I look forward to the rigorous and demanding discussions that occupy us and to the extraordinary collegiality that characterizes all our deliberations, even the most difficult.
Joan Wallach Scott (History), Institute for Advanced Study, chair
Cases Settled Through Staff Mediation
The work of Committee A’s staff in bringing cases to a sound resolution is illustrated in the four brief accounts that follow. Nearly twenty such cases were closed during the 1999-2000 academic year after having been resolved through mediation by the staff.
A visiting assistant professor at a large public university in the Midwest was notified in February of his third year of service that his appointment for that academic year would be terminal because of complaints against him by unidentified students. The assistant professor argued that four months of notice was not only inadequate but also in breach of an earlier commitment to retain him for at least one additional year. He argued further that he should be afforded opportunity to refute the complaints in a hearing before a faculty body. His dean, however, replied that the university’s provisions for notice and for appeal do not apply to someone holding a "visiting" appointment. The assistant professor then turned to the Association for assistance.
The Association’s staff wrote to the dean, pointing out that the "visiting" designation did not make the assistant professor’s appointment one that was "clearly designated at the outset as involving only a brief association with the institution," the only kind of full-time faculty appointment considered by the AAUP to warrant an exception from applicable procedural standards. The staff recommended that the assistant professor be retained for at least one additional year, and that he be allowed to contest the complaints against him, if they are not withdrawn, through the university’s grievance procedure. The dean stated in response that the recommendations were "fair and appropriate." The assistant professor received an appointment for the following academic year and was informed that the year afterward his position would be converted into one that was probationary for tenure. He was invited to be a candidate in the next year’s search for the probationary appointee, and he was assured that, in the consideration of his candidacy, the previous year’s student complaints would not be held against him.
A faculty member at a private university in New England, praised for his teaching but lacking scholarly publication, was not evaluated for tenure as the probationary period drew to a close. He was retained, however, under renewable annual appointments. In his eighteenth year on the university faculty, at age fifty-nine, he was informed by his dean that the year would be his last because of a budget deficit in his school.
An Association staff member, asked to assist, spoke with a university administrative officer who had previously consulted with him about problems that needed to be resolved. The administrative officer, agreeing that the faculty member should not be released without demonstration of cause, said that he would take the matter up with the dean. He did so, and the faculty member was promptly offered an appointment for the following year. Further discussions during that year resulted in the dean’s informal assurances to the Association’s staff that the annual appointments would continue. The faculty member did indeed continue in his teaching position until he retired upon reaching age sixty-five.
A faculty member at a large public university in the South asked the Association for assistance after having been notified by the administration that she would not receive tenure and her appointment for the following year would be terminal. She had been recommended favorably for tenure by the overwhelming majority of her tenured colleagues, who commended her for the excellence of her professional performance. A new department head, however, who had quarreled with her over administrative matters, strongly opposed her candidacy on grounds of poor "collegiality," and his position was supported by the dean.
A member of the Association’s staff wrote to the university’s chief administrative officer that the allegation by the new department head of deficient "collegiality" not only seemed quite unfair on the basis of the available facts—what with no complaints about her collegiality having come forth from her colleagues who had known her and her work since she first came to the university—but also suggested opposition to her candidacy based significantly on her having legitimately exercised her academic freedom on matters of professional concern.
Within a week after receipt of the staff member’s letter, the administration notified the faculty member that she was being granted tenure. "It has been a great consolation to me to have the backing of the AAUP," the faculty member wrote to the staff, "and I only hope to be of service some day through the AAUP to those faculty members in a situation similar to mine."
An English professor in her first year of service at a newly established branch campus of a state university in the Southwest sought the Association’s assistance after having been denied reappointment. The administration had conducted no formal evaluation of her academic performance and had given no indication of any perceived deficiencies in that performance.
The faculty member had received largely positive student assessments of her teaching. The administration declined to provide her with an explanation, either oral or written, for its decision against reappointing her. She alleged that the decision was based in significant part on displeasure with her outspoken criticism of various actions by the administration and thus was violative of her academic freedom. The branch campus regulations did not provide for review of such allegations by a faculty body.
The Association’s staff wrote to the administration, urging that the faculty member be given the reasons for not being reappointed and an opportunity for faculty review of her allegation regarding academic freedom. The faculty member then entered into discussions with the university’s central administration looking toward a satisfactory resolution of her case and of related issues of academic freedom and due process. She later reported having achieved an acceptable settlement with the institution that included an appointment to the faculty of the main campus.