Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has had a busy year. Beyond the cases that have been investigated and adjudicated, and the policy documents the committee has produced, it has been discussing the increasingly politicized climate on college campuses and our need to address it. The wars in the Middle East have come home to our campuses, as evidenced by controversies about invited speakers; by student accusations, for example at Columbia University, that professors who criticize Israel are anti-Semitic; by the dismissal of faculty members accused by the government of supporting or aiding terrorists; and by the intrusion of outsiders—lobbyists, journalists, talk-show hosts, and politicians—who presume to be able to judge, on little hard evidence, what is going on in classrooms, and who want to take over the processes of evaluation that ordinarily belong to faculty. In addition, pressures both external and internal—in the form of activist David Horowitz’s campaign for a so-called Academic Bill of Rights and the organization on campuses of Students for Academic Freedom—threaten processes of governance and academic freedom as they have been traditionally understood. These groups often cite AAUP statements in support of arguments about individual rights that are not the same as our ideas about academic freedom. One of our challenges is to explain what these differences are. Another is to find ways to guarantee the academic freedom of growing numbers of the part- and full-time contingent faculty. Their vulnerability because they lack the safeguards of tenure is especially clear when they become involved in these controversies.
Judicial Business
Imposition of Censure
At its June meeting, Committee A considered three cases that had been the subject of reports published in Academe since the 2004 annual meeting. The committee adopted the following statements concerning these cases. The Council concurred in the recommendations, and in each instance censure was voted by the 2005 annual meeting.
Meharry Medical College (Tennessee)
The investigating committee’s report concluded that the administration of Meharry Medical College acted in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure in the cases of eleven professors. Although each of them had served well beyond the maximum permissible period of probation, the administration did not recognize their attainment of tenure and terminated their services without having afforded them the safeguards of academic due process that should accrue with service beyond the stated probationary period. In the cases of two of the professors, the investigating committee found strong prima facie evidence that the administration’s decision to terminate their services was based on their disagreements with the administration’s policies and practices, disagreements which, under generally accepted principles of academic freedom, college faculty should be free to voice. The notice of termination received by all of the faculty members, the investigating committee concluded, was severely inadequate under the Association’s applicable recommended standards.
The investigating committee further found that the Meharry administration, in placing certain professors on what it described as “paid administrative leave,” effectively suspended them from further academic responsibilities. With the suspensions not preceded by demonstration of cause, the committee concluded that the actions against these faculty members were tantamount to summary dismissals. Finally, the investigating committee found that the administration effectively scuttled faculty tenure of indefinite duration at the college by replacing it with tenure for a span of ten years, with no assurance that the administration bears the burden of proof in a decision against further retention.
Beyond its treatment of the issues of academic freedom and tenure at Meharry Medical College, the investigating committee found that the administration had virtually abrogated any system of faculty governance in the medical school, thereby violating not only generally accepted principles of shared authority but also the governing documents of the school itself.
Committee A recommends to the Ninety-first Annual Meeting that Meharry Medical College be placed on the Association’s list of censured administrations.
University of the Cumberlands (Kentucky)
The investigating committee’s published report discusses the actions taken by the administration of the University of the Cumberlands that led to the separation of one professor from the faculty in the midst of an academic year after he had created an off-campus Web site that was highly critical of the administration. The report is also concerned with the administration’s nonrenewal of the appointment of a second professor, who had been the first professor’s department chair.
In the case of the first professor, the committee found that he had been summoned abruptly to the president’s office and required to choose then and there between resignation and immediate discharge. The committee found that the administration failed to pursue discussions with the professor that could have led to a mutually acceptable settlement and refused to accept his withdrawal of an oral resignation it had effectively coerced from him. Thus, the committee concluded, it deprived him of academic due process as set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings. The investigating committee also found the professor’s claim that the administration acted against him because of displeasure with his Web site and thereby violated his academic freedom was supported by prima facie evidence that the administration had not rebutted.
In the case of the second professor, the investigating committee found that a special contract that the administration had proffered to him, placing him in the status of an “at-will” employee subject to dismissal “at any time and without [stated] cause,” could reasonably be construed as intended to force his departure from the faculty. The severity of its terms, the committee concluded, effectively denied this professor reappointment. The committee further found that the administration’s decision to impose unacceptable terms and conditions on this second professor’s reappointment was based principally on its displeasure with his failure to follow directives it had issued to him regarding action against the first faculty member, thereby violating his academic freedom as well. The committee also found that neither faculty member was given the notice or severance salary called for in the Association’s recommended standards. Finally, the committee found that the policies of the University of the Cumberlands, including the grievance procedure, do not provide for faculty hearings of any kind. The institution’s policies and practices, the committee concluded, preclude any effective faculty role in academic governance and contribute to an atmosphere that stifles the freedom of faculty to question and criticize administrative decisions and actions.
Committee A recommends to the Ninety-first Annual Meeting that the University of the Cumberlands be placed on the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Virginia State University
The report of the investigating committee concerns the dismissal of two tenured members of the Virginia State University faculty, after each of them had been required to undergo a process of post-tenure review. The committee found that the university’s system of post-tenure review, as the administration implemented it in the two cases, made no provision for faculty peer involvement in the performance evaluation that triggers the review process, permitted an unsatisfactory evaluation effectively to stand alone as grounds for dismissal, and shifted the burden of proof for retention from the administration to the affected faculty members. The committee concluded that the process that was followed leaves tenured faculty vulnerable to dismissal without affordance of academic due process as called for under Association-supported standards. In the judgment of the investigating committee, the two cases exemplify in stark terms the deficiencies of a system of post-tenure review if an administration decides to use the system as a means for dismissing tenured members of the faculty.
The investigating committee also found that the administration of Virginia State University acted in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the derivative 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings in dismissing the two professors without having first demonstrated cause for its actions in a hearing before a duly constituted faculty body. The committee further found that the administration wrongfully suspended one of the professors from her teaching duties without any evidence that her continuance represented a threat of immediate harm as required in the 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards. The virtual absence of notice in the dismissals of the two professors—in one case, five days, in the other case, just over three weeks—and the failure to provide them with severance salary, the committee concluded, constitute severe departures from the applicable provisions of the 1940 Statement of Principles. Finally, the committee found that the Virginia State University administration’s practices are seriously deficient in meeting the standards for faculty participation in institutional governance under principles of shared authority, as enunciated in the Association’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
Committee A recommends to the Ninety-first Annual Meeting that Virginia State University be placed on the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Postponement of Consideration for Censure
Regarding a fourth case involving the City University of New York that had been the subject of a recently published report, Committee A approved the following statement. The Council concurred in the committee’s statement, but, in addition, adopted a motion recommending that the Association’s general secretary initiate a “new and broader inquiry into the conditions of academic freedom and due process at CUNY.” The annual meeting concurred in both statements. (For the full text of the Council statement approved by the annual meeting, see the Record of the Council.)
City University of New York
The report of the investigating committee concerns actions by the central administration of the City University of New York to remove an adjunct lecturer from his classes in the midst of a semester and to deny him further teaching assignments. The administration took these actions upon learning that the adjunct, who was then in his seventh year of part-time teaching at the City University ’s York College , had been indicted with two others by the federal government on charges of assisting a terrorist organization. The charges related to work he had done as an Arabic translator employed by the chief subject of the indictment, an attorney for a convicted terrorist.
An officer of the City University ’s central administration telephoned the York College administration to convey the decision to suspend the adjunct for the remainder of the semester (for which he was paid) and to bar him from further teaching. Nothing in writing about the decision was sent to the adjunct or to the relevant York College administrators, however. The adjunct, who had accepted oral offers at York to teach in the fall, learned only with the approach of that semester that he would not be allowed to teach the courses that had been scheduled for him.
Through the grievance procedures in the faculty collective bargaining agreement, the adjunct contended that he had been improperly deprived of his right to reappointment for the fall. The case went to arbitration, and the arbitrator denied the grievance on grounds that under the bargaining agreement failure to issue notice of nonreappointment by the indicated date did not automatically provide a right of retention.
The Association’s investigating committee, in its report that was published while the trial of the adjunct on criminal charges was in process, concluded that the City University administration had suspended the adjunct with no claim of immediate harm threatened by his continuance and with none of the procedural protections called for in AAUP-supported standards. The committee also concluded that the administration’s refusal to honor the adjunct’s appointment for the fall semester was tantamount to a summary dismissal in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
Two months after the publication of the Association’s report, the jury in the federal trial found the adjunct and the two others guilty of the charges against them. Sentencing by the judge is currently scheduled for late in September, and appeals are fully expected if the convictions are permitted to stand.
While the trial was still going on, representatives of Committee A met with the City University ’s chancellor, executive vice chancellor, and general counsel for a discussion of the case. Committee A’s representatives emphasized that the activities that were the subject of the trial had no bearing on the adjunct’s work at York College, and the chancellor offered assurance, should the adjunct be acquitted of the criminal charges against him, that he would comply with a recommendation from York College calling for his reinstatement to the faculty. Subsequent to the adjunct’s conviction in trial court, this assurance has been reiterated.
Discussions through telephone conversations and correspondence with the administration about deficiencies that the investigating committee found in City University policies and practices have continued in recent weeks. Some progress can be reported.
With regard to notice of nonreappointment, in the arbitration of the York adjunct’s case the administration has maintain- ed that failure to notify an adjunct by the stated official deadline was not subject to arbitral remedy because the grievance-arbitration procedure did not apply to an adjunct whose term of appointment had expired. The administration now acknow-ledges that lack of timely notice to an adjunct is subject to arbi- tration for potential remedy, thus changing from a position that no remedy is warranted to acceptance of a procedure for determining what remedy would be due under the specific circumstances.
With regard to the availability of arbitration in the case of an adjunct suspended within the term of an appointment, the administration’s initial position was that this is an issue to be worked out through collective bargaining. The administration now agrees that suspended adjuncts are covered by the collective bargaining grievance procedure and thus have access to arbitration.
Finally, with regard to suspension and the procedure for imposing it, the administration declined to accept the AAUP-recommended “immediate harm” standard for suspending a faculty member that an earlier City University administration had adopted, but it granted that suspending an adjunct, even with continuance of salary, is a serious action. While the decision to remove the York adjunct from further teaching had been made and allowed to stand without any faculty involvement, the administration, noting that procedures relating to suspension are governed by the collective bargaining agreement, now states that it will consider any changes the faculty union wishes to propose.
Committee A recognizes these positive developments. Nonetheless, the committee remains keenly interested in the case of the York College adjunct while legal proceedings have yet to run their course, and while the administration and the faculty union pursue discussion with the aim of strengthening formal protections for adjuncts in the City University . Two subsequent and disturbing developments, one involving the nonreappointment of an adjunct faculty member at City University’s John Jay College, and the other involving the selection of a department chair at Brooklyn College, have cast in a new light the administration’s claim that the actions against the York College adjunct were not politically motivated. The university’s general counsel, in comments on the investigating committee’s report, stated that “the chancellor’s decisions were motivated in part out of a concern that public confidence would suffer if [the adjunct] were permitted to teach at York College .” The emergence of a possible pattern of failure to safeguard the university from political interference in matters of academic appointments has led Committee A to reevaluate the investigating committee’s categorical conclusion that the York College adjunct “was suspended or discontinued because of his indictment” rather than because of anticipated public reaction to his indictment.
Accordingly, Committee A has recommended that the general secretary inform the City University of New York administration that he has opened an inquiry into conditions of academic freedom in the City University system, and that he may appoint a new committee to conduct an investigation if he finds the university insufficiently responsive to the committee’s concerns. Committee A will report again on the City University of New York to the annual meeting in 2006.
Removal of Censure
Committee A adopted the following statements recommending action with respect to Wingate University and Southern Nazarene University. The Council concurred in the recommendations, and the 2005 annual meeting voted to remove censure.
Wingate University (North Carolina)
The Association’s 1979 annual meeting imposed censure on the Wingate University administration following a published report on its action to terminate the services of six faculty members at the end of their one-year contracts. The report found that three of them had been on the faculty for over a decade yet were not afforded the procedural safeguards against dismissal called for in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In the other three cases, the report found that the faculty members were denied the protections provided by the Association’s Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. The report concluded that Wingate University lacked a meaningful system of tenure.
A year and a half ago, the current president of the university requested that the Association’s staff prepare a “plan to end this troubled relationship.” In subsequent correspondence with the administration, the staff urged, as critical to achieving the censure removal, the adoption of policy stating that further appointments of faculty members are presumed after seven years unless the administration demonstrates cause for dismissal before a body of faculty peers. The staff also recommended modifications in nonreappointment and dismissal procedures. The university’s Faculty Assembly and the administration agreed to these revisions in fall 2004, and the university’s board of trustees approved the revised policies at its meeting in January 2005.
Of the six faculty members whose cases prompted the censure, three had sought the Association’s assistance. One died several years ago. The administration agreed to a staff recommendation to offer a modest payment to the remaining two, both of whom accepted the offer.
An Association representative from another North Carolina institution visited Wingate University this spring and met with the president and ten faculty members. He subsequently reported strong faculty support for the policy changes, and a healthy climate for academic freedom at the university. He recommended that the censure be removed.
These developments have been reported to the president of AAUP’s North Carolina Conference, who has raised no concerns.
Committee A recommends to the Ninety-first Annual Meeting that Wingate University be removed from the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Southern Nazarene University (Oklahoma)
The 1987 annual meeting placed Southern Nazarene University on the Association’s censure list after its administration terminated the appointments of eight professors. The president attributed the actions to financial considerations, but later he stated that he acted in specific cases on grounds relating to personal and professional fitness. The Association’s investigating committee concluded that the president, in basing his actions against some of the professors on grounds of their being unfit to continue without identifying who was alleged to have done what, denied basic protections of academic due process to all of them.
The investigating committee had found the tenure polices at Southern Nazarene University to be severely deficient. They remained so until last year, when, under the leadership of the current president and with the advice of the Association’s staff, the governing board adopted faculty-approved polices affording the procedural safeguards that accrue with tenure to all full-time faculty members after five years of service. The staff then proposed additional modifications in policy, designed to bring existing regulations closer to AAUP-supported standards relating to notice requirements and to financial exigency, and these were approved by the faculty last November and adopted by the board in January.
The cases of four of the eight professors whose services were terminated had been resolved many years ago, but four others remained to be settled. Early this spring, each was offered and accepted a modest sum of money from Southern Nazarene University as a form of redress. A professor from another institution in the area visited Southern Nazarene University in April as the Association’s representative and held meetings with representatives of the faculty and administration. He has reported that “lessons have been learned,” that faculty members hold the current administration in high regard, and that the climate for academic freedom and due process for faculty is excellent.
The officers of the Association’s Oklahoma Conference have been kept abreast of these developments and have not expressed any concerns.
Committee A recommends to the Ninety-first Annual Meeting that Southern Nazarene University be removed from the Association’s list of censured administrations.
Case Brought Back to the 2005 Annual Meeting
Committee A approved the statement printed below concerning Medaille College . The Council and the annual meeting concurred in the statement. In addition, the annual meeting approved a motion recommending that the Association’s national office and the New York State AAUP conference continue to monitor the activities of the college administration relating to academic freedom and due process at the institution. (For the full text of the annual meeting motion, see the Report of the Ninety-first Annual Meeting).
Medaille College (New York)
Last year, Committee A reported to the annual meeting that discussions had been taking place between a new administration and the two professors who had been dismissed, looking toward a resolution of their respective cases. In one case the administration had proposed reinstatement, and in the second case the focus was on a cash settlement. In addition, Committee A reported that proposed revisions to the faculty handbook consistent with Association-supported standards of academic due process were under discussion by the faculty and administration, but formal action by the faculty and board of trustees had yet to occur. Encouraged by these positive developments, Committee A withheld a recommendation regarding Medaille College to the 2004 annual meeting and stated that it would report again on the college to the annual meeting in 2005.
Almost immediately following the 2004 annual meeting, the two professors notified the Association’s general secretary that they had each resolved all their disputes with the college. They each asked that the Association take no action that would be detrimental to the college or its reputation.
With respect to revision of current institutional policies, the faculty had protracted discussions through the 2004–05 academic year with the administration and a consultant the college had retained. In early May, the faculty met to vote on proposed changes in the handbook. The proposals dealt with layoff and dismissal, grievance procedures, and procedures for revising the handbook. The proposed dismissal procedures included the requirement that the administration consult with a faculty committee concerning the propriety, length, and other conditions of a suspension pending the outcome of a dismissal hearing, that a full on-the-record hearing take place before a dismissal can occur, and that the burden of proof in a dismissal proceeding rest with the institution. The faculty voted by secret ballot. The final tally for each of the proposed changes in the handbook fell short, however, of the two-thirds required to approve them.
The faculty continued to work on revisions to the handbook. At a special meeting on May 26 the faculty agreed to consider further revisions to the handbook at its next scheduled meeting on June 3. Voting again by secret ballot, the required two-thirds majority of the entire college faculty approved the handbook as revised. The revised policies comport, in every major respect, with Association standards.
During the May 26 meeting, the faculty voted fifty-eight in favor and one opposed, with three abstentions, to direct its five-person council to “present an argument [to the Association] that censure of Medaille at this time would be counterproductive.” In a letter to the Association, the council stated that “through an open democratic dialogue, the faculty continue to provide strong and significant input throughout the ongoing Handbook revision process,” and that “through a process of shared governance, the administration has supported the faculty in their efforts to revise the Faculty Handbook.” The letter concluded with the council’s reiterating the faculty’s position that censure by the 2005 annual meeting would not be productive.
The president of the college also wrote to the Association. He “anticipates that the Board of Trustees will vote to approve a complete and revised set of governance documents for the College during their January 2006 meeting,” that censure “at this time in the history of the College” would appear to repudiate “all the serious effort engaged and good work accomplished by the various constituencies of Medaille College over the last three years,” and that the Medaille community would find censure “tremendously discouraging.”
In addition, the college’s AAUP chapter voted, with one dissent, to urge that censure not be imposed. The chapter’s resolution stated that “the faculty share with the new administration of the College in the governance of Medaille,” that the “process currently being used to revise the faculty handbook reflects the commitment of the College to shared governance,” and that revision of the handbook “has so far been followed in good faith by faculty and the administration.”
Committee A had hoped that formal action by both the faculty and the board of trustees to approve revised institutional policies would occur in advance of the 2005 annual meeting. The committee welcomes the positive faculty vote, however, and it sees the college administration, working with the faculty, as committed to adopting sound policies for academic due process. Mindful of the settlement of the cases of the two dismissed professors and the faculty’s approval of revised policies, Committee A believes that any additional Association action should be deferred until the governing board has the opportunity to review, and, it is hoped, to adopt, adequate protections for academic freedom and tenure. Committee A will continue to lend encouragement to achieve this desired result. It makes no recommendation to the 2005 annual meeting, but will bring back the Medaille College case to the annual meeting in 2006.
Case of a Censured Administration
Committee A adopted the following statement with respect to Benedict College , which was the subject of a supplementary report published in the January–February 2005 issue of Academe. The Council and the annual meeting endorsed the statement.
Benedict College (South Carolina)
On only four occasions over the years, events indicating disregard for academic freedom and tenure at an institution already on the Association’s censure list have been so extraordinary as to warrant publication of a supplementary report. This has occurred now at Benedict College. Censure was imposed in 1994 and has remained in effect because of deficiencies in official college policies governing faculty appointments.
The supplementary report describes action by the current college president, without the faculty’s prior knowledge or consent, to institute a new policy for first- and second-year students under which a student’s efforts would count at least as much as academic performance in assigning grades. Two professors spoke out against the policy from the outset. One of them, despite strong misgivings, implemented the policy for a semester. The experience—for example, having to give a final grade of “C” to a student whose highest grade on any test was less than 40 percent but who regularly attended class and did laboratory exercises—led him to disregard the policy from then on. The other professor declined to adhere to the president’s policy throughout. Both professors made no secret of their noncompliance.
By the time the president’s grading policy was in its second year, college administrative officers apparently recognized that it was not being applied universally. A memorandum from the administration called upon faculty members not adhering to the policy to identify themselves and explain why. The two professors came forth, emphasizing in separate responses that the grades of their students were based on what the students learned. The professors were ordered to change their grades for the previous semester in accordance with the president’s policy, lest they face dismissal. They declined to do so, whereupon the president initiated proceedings against them and dismissed them on grounds of insubordination.
A reactivated Benedict College AAUP chapter protested against the president’s usurpation of faculty prerogatives by unilaterally instituting an unwanted policy on student grading. The chapter protested further when he dismissed the two professors. After the college president was sent the draft text of the Association’s report on these matters, he notified the chapter’s president and its vice president, each of whom chaired a department, that he was removing them from their chairs.
The supplementary report on Benedict College refers in its concluding observations to the Association’s widely adopted Statement on Professional Ethics, which calls upon faculty members “to ensure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit.” This was the goal of the two Benedict professors, and Committee A finds it reprehensible for the college president to have dismissed them for having declined to abandon this goal by changing their grades to comport with the policy he imposed. The committee invites the Ninety-first Annual Meeting to concur in this judgment by endorsing this statement.
Legislative Business
Committee A published a revised text of Verification and Trust: Background Investigations Preceding Faculty Appointments in the November–December 2004 issue of Academe. A revised text of the report Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications, approved by Committee A and adopted by the Council in November 2004, was published in the January–February 2005 issue of Academe. Also in that issue is a statement titled Professors of Practice. Drafted by a Committee A subcommittee, the statement argues that separating teachers from researchers and granting tenure only to faculty who are significantly engaged in research undermines the safeguards that tenure must provide for classroom instruction: “Severing the connection between teaching and tenure impairs the freedom to teach. Academic freedom is essential for the protection of the rights of the teacher.”
The committee had several long discussions about publicizing Committee A procedures. A joint subcommittee with the Committee on College and University Governance reviewed the conduct of case investigations and other aspects of Committee A work. The subcommittee contacted members of investigating committees and also looked back at earlier reports. One of these reports, written in 1962 by former Committee A chair David Fellman, was reprinted in the March–April 2005 issue of Academe. Although much has changed in the world of higher education, Fellman’s report is nonetheless still relevant because it nicely characterizes what continues to be the essence of the committee’s work.
At its June meeting, the committee heard a preliminary report from a joint subcommittee (with the Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession) on part-time faculty members and academic due process. It agreed on the desirability of including in the Association’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure a new regulation on this subject. The precise text of the proposed new regulation will be revised and presented to Committee A at its November meeting.
Also at its June meeting, the committee authorized the establishment of a subcommittee to examine the government’s rules for human subject research and their implications for academic freedom, especially with respect to research in the social sciences and the humanities.
Responding to recent controversy about resolutions adopted by the British Association of University Teachers calling for an academic boycott of two Israeli universities (the resolutions were subsequently repealed), the committee created a subcommittee to prepare a report on the general issue of academic boycotts. It will consider the following questions, among others. Can there ever be justification for an academic boycott? Do boycotts inevitably violate academic freedom? Are there alternative ways to condemn a university’s own violation of the academic freedom of some of its faculty other than to engage in a boycott?
Committee A work continues in two other areas as well. A subcommittee is writing a statement on academic freedom and outside speakers on campus. Although the committee has in the past responded to specific cases, the number of controversies in the past year or so—at California State University–San Marcos, Florida Gulf Coast University, George Mason University, Hamil ton College, and Utah Valley State College—pointed to a gap in our treatment of this subject. Committee A concluded that a po licy statement that would provide a standard for faculty and administrators involved in these kinds of controversies would be useful.
The committee continues to receive updates from the Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis. Members of the special committee have spoken on a number of campuses and at several AAUP chapter meetings about developments since the publication of its report in the November–December 2003 issue of Academe. Robert O’Neil, the special committee’s chair, delivered an address on the subject to the 2004 annual meeting. The text was published in the November–December 2004 issue of Academe.
Committee A Digitized
Thanks to the excellent work of Susan Smee in the national office, the Association now offers a CD which contains all the published case reports of Committee A from its inception to 2004. The disc, which sells for $19 to AAUP members and $37 to nonmembers, can be ordered for individuals and libraries.
In Conclusion
With this report, my term as chair of Committee A comes to an end. It has been an inspiring and demanding six years. It is hard to underestimate the education one receives as a member of this committee. Not only do we gain a national (even an international) perspective on the world of higher education, but we also get to intervene in ways that matter. Our policy statements define the terms of academic freedom, set standards of good governance, and offer legitimation for the efforts of faculty to maintain the integrity and the dignity of their work. (At the annual meeting this year, the Benedict College chapter offered an inspiring example of faculty who, with AAUP principles and Association support, are refusing to let administrators demean our profession.) In crafting those statements, committee members engage in critical debates about principles and premises as well as about strategy and rhetoric. We are direct and forceful in expressing our individual views, yet we manage—more often than I sometimes expected—to come to shared conclusions and to produce results of which we and the Association can be proud. At their best, Committee A’s deliberations are a powerful combination of practical philosophy and democratic practice—a model worthy of emulation outside as well as inside the academy.
—Joan Wallach Scott
(History), Institute for Advanced Study, chair
At its meeting on June 3, Committee A adopted by acclamation the following resolution:
Joan Wallach Scott’s exemplary service as chair of Committee A comes to an end with this meeting of the committee and her report next week to the AAUP’s 2005 annual meeting. Over the past six years, Joan has firmly and impartially prodded the committee to get on with its tasks. She has done so with a capacity for directness derived from her passion for truth and an unswerving devotion to academic freedom, tenure, and due process and to our Association’s role as their champions. Fortunately, Joan will still be with us as a consultant, continuing to keep us on track and to contribute to the special work that we do.