1998-99 Committee A Report

The year 1998-99 is notable chiefly for the record number of institutions which the annual meeting removed from the Association's list of censured administrations. For the first time in several years, the number of removal actions substantially exceeded the number of institutions added to the censure list. This result reflected a hope expressed in last year's Committee A report, continuing and conscientious efforts on the part of Committee A's staff, and a commendable commitment by the administrations and governing boards of each of the institutions to demonstrate achievements of the conditions requisite for censure removal.

Another salutary development the past academic year was the addition of eight new signatories to the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure--a diverse and varied group of scholarly organizations, some quite recent in formation (The Historical Society, for example), and others of longer standing but of recent commitment to the 1940 Statement (The Association for Theatre in Higher Education, for example). Such impressive growth in the roster of adherents--now numbering 167--attests to the continuing vitality and appeal within the academic community of the Association's most basic values and principles.

Despite such very welcome developments, the general condition of academic freedom at the close of the millennium must be described as mixed. While the threats these days seldom occur in the crude forms of earlier decades, several worrisome trends continue--growing reliance on part-time and other non-tenure-track faculty for basic teaching; rising popularity of alternative (nontenure-eligible) faculty employment arrangements, such as full-time term contracts; expansion and increased acceptance of distance education arrangements that seem inimical to traditional academic values; and special concerns in such vital sectors as medical education, legal education, and Catholic colleges and universities. Committee A during the year turned its attention to the potential jeopardy each of these areas poses to academic freedom and tenure.

This also marks a time of notable transition within the professional staff. Jordan Kurland, who for three-and-a-half decades has inspired the work of Committee A and has been a wise and patient counselor not only to countless embattled professors but also to innumerable institutions seeking guidance in academic freedom and tenure matters, is assuming a modified role within the Association. Through the fall and winter months, Martin Snyder will gradually assume the major Committee A leadership role. During that period and well beyond, however, Jordan Kurland's unmatched understanding of Association policy and practice, and the long-standing confidence of the higher education community in him, will be indispensable to the smooth transition that should ensure the Association's central role in its core activity of protecting academic freedom and tenure. Also vital to that transition are the expertise and dedication of the other members of the Committee A staff in the Association's Washington office, who throughout the past year continued to handle an average of five or more cases or complaints every business day.

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 1998 annual meeting. In one of those cases, publication of the report seemed an appropriate and adequate measure, and no further action was recommended. In the other two cases, the committee adopted the following statements. The Council concurred in them, and in both cases the annual meeting voted to place the institution on the Association's list of censured administrations. (It should be noted that at the time of the annual meeting five additional cases were under active investigation, at various stages in process, potentially leading to reports published prior to the June 2000 meeting of Committee A.)

Johnson & Wales University

 The investigating committee's report concerns the decision, conveyed by the administration of Johnson & Wales University on May 18, 1998, to two first-year faculty members, not to renew their appointments beyond that academic year. The administration provided no explanation to one faculty member for not renewing her appointment, and gave an inadequate oral explanation to the second faculty member. The only procedure for appeal within the university was to the vice president for academic affairs, who informed each faculty member that renewal of a faculty appointment is an "employer prerogative" and as such is exempt from the appeal procedure. The investigating committee concluded that the Johnson & Wales University administration denied the two faculty members academic due process to which they were entitled under the Association's Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. The investigating committee found further that the notice of nonreappointment that they received was egregiously late under the Association's standards for notice.

The investigating committee's report discusses an allegation of the two faculty members that the decision of the administration not to reappoint them was based on its displeasure with their disagreements with other faculty members in their program and with their dean over educational policies. The investigating committee concluded that the views expressed by the faculty members merited protection under principles of academic freedom. The committee found prima facie evidence, unrebutted by the administration, indicating that displeasure with these views was the determining factor in the administration's decision not to reappoint them. The committee concluded that the administration thus violated their academic freedom.

Although this was not directly a factor in the two cases, the investigating committee's report also discusses the absence of a system of tenure at Johnson & Wales University, with all faculty members serving under indefinitely renewable term appointments.

The committee also noted a number of incidents relating to its investigation that appeared to indicate an atmosphere of intimidation of members of the faculty.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Johnson & Wales University be placed on the Association's list of censured administrations.

Mount Marty College

 The report of the investigating committee discusses the suspension and subsequent dismissal of a tenured professor at Mount Marty College. On January 23, 1998, the president of the college notified the professor that "reasonable grounds for dismissal may exist" because he may have "engaged in serious personal misconduct; violated the rights and freedoms of others; and seriously failed to follow right conduct and professional ethics." He was placed on suspension effective immediately, and he was dismissed on February 6. The president stated as cause for the dismissal that the professor had made false statements about the search that led to the president's appointment; that he had "falsely represented" that the college was in a state of crisis; that, without authority, he had filed a grievance with a member of the board of trustees; and that he caused "emotional distress and unnecessary anxiety" among college administrators and trustees.

The college's stated policies provide that a tenured faculty member can be dismissed only under the procedures set forth in the Association's Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The policies separately provide that a dismissal may also be the basis for a grievance. In suspending and then dismissing the professor, the president referred him only to the college's grievance process. The faculty member protested being denied a hearing of record before an elected faculty committee as called for in the Recommended Institutional Regulations, but to no avail.

The investigating committee concluded that the Mount Marty College administration and board violated the academic freedom of the professor by dismissing him for actions that constitute protected conduct under principles of academic freedom. Moreover, the investigating committee found that the administration of Mount Marty College wrongfully suspended the faculty member in the absence of a threat of immediate harm, the standard for suspension provided in the Recommended Institutional Regulations. It found further that the administration and board of trustees dismissed the faculty member without affording him academic due process as prescribed in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the Recommended Institutional Regulations, and the college's own official policies. The committee also found that the administration and the board disregarded the provision in the 1940 Statement of Principles for payment of severance salary.

Finally, the committee concluded that the administration and the board of trustees had been seriously derelict in meeting the standards enunciated in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities for the faculty role in academic governance.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Mount Marty College be placed on the Association's list of censured administrations.

Removal of Censure

At the time of the 1998 annual meeting, censure removal seemed imminent for two institutions, but the process could not be completed in time for favorable action at that meeting. Efforts continued with those institutions, and expanded during the year to include several others that had responded favorably to the Association's periodic invitation to all administrations on the censure list to address outstanding issues of concern. In each case, removal of censure requires not only that adequate redress has been offered to the aggrieved faculty member, but also that particular official policies deemed incompatible with Association standards have been modified and that general conditions of academic freedom at the institution are found satisfactory, most often through a campus visit by an experienced Association member from a nearby institution. Those three conditions were met in each of the seven cases for which Committee A, at its June meeting, recommended the removal of censure. The Council concurred in each recommendation, and the annual meeting acted to remove all seven institutions from the list of censured administrations.

University of Judaism

Censure, voted by the 1988 annual meeting, was based on an investigating committee's report dealing with the decision of the university president to deny tenure to a professor following a negative recommendation from an anonymous evaluating committee. The report found that the evaluators had acted questionably under the standards set forth in the Association's Statement on Professional Ethics, and that the professor's sex and her feminist convictions may well have been determining factors in the decision to deny tenure to her.

The professor's case was settled to her satisfaction several years ago, with the censure remaining in effect because of concern over the adequacy of the university's policies governing retention of faculty. This past December, the Association received a revised University of Judaism faculty handbook, approved by the academic senate and the current president, that includes provisions recommended by the AAUP staff and conforms with applicable AAUP-supported standards in all significant respects. A representative of the Association went to the university early last month to meet with faculty and administrative officers. He has reported favorably on the current climate for academic freedom.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that the University of Judaism be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

Alabama State University

 The investigating committee concluded that the Alabama State University administration, in terminating the services of five professors who had been on the faculty in excess of seven years, acted without demonstration of cause in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In two of these cases, the investigating committee concluded, the administration acted for reasons violative of the professors' academic freedom. Censure was imposed by the 1989 annual meeting.

Settlements were reached several years ago in all of the cases that occasioned the censure. Subsequent discussions between the Association's staff and the current administration of Alabama State University regarding the institution's official policies have led to significant changes. This past winter, the board of trustees adopted revisions with respect to academic freedom and tenure that substantially comport with the standards set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles and the Association's Recommended Institutional Regulations. The past president of the Alabama Conference visited the campus in April as the AAUP's representative and conferred with the president and faculty leaders. He has reported that the faculty leaders generally favor removing the censure and that he too supports removal.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Alabama State University be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

Concordia Theological Seminary

The Concordia Theological Seminary administration was placed on censure by the 1989 annual meeting following an investigating committee's report on the dismissal of a tenured professor accused of teaching "false doctrine" regarding the ordination of women. The report, while not questioning the seminary's right to insist upon a doctrinal commitment from its faculty, found that the commitment required by the seminary was incompatible with academic freedom as generally understood at American institutions of higher learning and that the professor had been dismissed for reasons violative of his academic freedom.

A settlement of the case of the dismissed professor was reached soon after the censure was imposed. Last summer, the current seminary president provided the Association with a revised synodical statement on academic freedom that acknowledges the "presentation of differing and even disturbing concepts" as appropriate educational activity. Although the revised statement on academic freedom enjoins faculty members to limit their public presentations regarding theological issues to their areas of expertise, the president of the seminary has assured the Association that this rule only requires faculty members who speak outside their specialties to make that fact clear. "The administration of Concordia Theological Seminary," the president wrote last month, "seeks to foster an atmosphere for open dialogue and discussion both within its internal and external constituencies." According to the recent accreditation report of the North Central Association/Association of Theological Schools, "On major doctrinal issues that have caused such divisiveness in the past, the faculty and administration of CTS presently discuss them broadly, engage in fraternal and meaningful discussion, and reach a high degree of consensus on those issues. Issues of the past are no longer center stage and no longer create an environment inimical to the educational goals of the Seminary."

With regard to an issue of academic due process raised in the investigating committee's report, the president has provided assurance that, in any future dismissal proceeding in which the seminary's board of regents disagrees with the faculty hearing committee's recommendation, he will petition the board to "return the matter to the committee with objections noted, prior to rendering a final decision. Only after it has received and reviewed the committee's reconsideration shall it render its final decision."

The president of the Association's Indiana Conference has been informed of these salutary developments and has voiced no concern. Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Concordia Theological Seminary be removed from the Association's lise of censured administrations.

Saint Leo College

The 1990 annual meeting acted to censure the administration of Saint Leo College after an investigating committee reported on the case of an assistant professor who was denied reappointment. Although the faculty member alleged that sex-based discrimination was a significant factor in the decision, she was not afforded a hearing. The investigating committee, noting that the college's collective bargaining agreement with the faculty did not provide for any review of discrimination complaints, stated that a hearing nevertheless could have been arranged. The committee concluded that the professor was denied protections of academic due process. The committee also found that the notice of nonreappointment issued to her was six months late when measured against the Association's recommended standards.

A subsequently revised collective bargaining agreement extended the grievance procedure to complaints of discrimination in cases of nonreappointment and brought standards for notice closer to those the Association recommends. Other college policies relating to academic freedom and tenure are generally consistent with Association-supported standards.

The remaining issue preventing removal of the censure, that of redress for the nonreappointed professor, was resolved this past winter. The administration offered a monetary payment that was acceptable to her.

The president of the Association's Florida Conference visited Saint Leo College last month and met with officers of the administration and the faculty. He has reported favorably on current conditions.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Saint Leo College be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

Wesley College

The investigating committee's report leading to censure of the Wesley College administration by the 1992 annual meeting dealt with the dismissal of five professors. The report concluded that the administration and the board of trustees had dismissed them for reasons violative of their academic freedom. The investigating committee also expressed concern about "a continuing atmosphere of suspicion and discord."

After the report was approved by Committee A for publication, the five professors reached settlements with the college. Committee A, however, referring to the report's conclusion that the college's official policies were deficient and the administration's practices were severely deficient, recommended that the censure be imposed.

In September 1997, a new president of Wesley College visited the Association's Washington office to discuss the censure and its potential removal. In May 1998, a faculty-administration task force provided the Association's staff with a draft text of a substantially revised faculty handbook. The staff proposed two changes in the official procedures, both of which were accepted, bringing the document's provisions into close conformity with Association-recommended standards. This past winter the new faculty handbook was approved by the faculty and adopted by the president with the authorization of the board of trustees.

Late in April, the president of the Delaware Conference visited Wesley College as the Association's representative and held meetings with the administrative officers and members of the faculty. Writing in support of censure removal, she has stated that the current administration has made a "180-degree turn" from the path of the previous administration and that today's atmosphere for academic freedom is "palpably different." The college faculty voted in early May to support removal of the censure.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Wesley College be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

Stevens Institute of Technology

The 1995 annual meeting placed the administration of Stevens Institute of Technology on censure following the release of five professors who had served beyond the seven years of probation permitted under the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

Each had been informed some years earlier that he had been found qualified for tenure but that a decision to grant it would be deferred. The published report concluded that the administration notified them of the termination of their services without having demonstrated cause, thereby acting in violation of the 1940 Statement.

The institute's official policies no longer allow deferral of tenure decisions, and other institutional provisions bearing on academic freedom and tenure generally comport with those recommended by the Association. Financial settlements have been reached with three of the five professors, and the administration has offered similar amounts in order to settle with the remaining two. An Association representative visited the Stevens campus last month and met with members of the faculty council, with the dean of the School of Engineering, and with the president. The representative has recommended removal of the censure.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that Stevens Institute of Technology be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

University of Southern California

Censure of the University of Southern California administration, voted by the 1996 annual meeting, resulted from an investigating committee's report on the nonreappointment of a faculty member, praised for her teaching and her research, who was accused of having "repeatedly and inappropriately pressured students." The report concluded, as did a faculty hearing board, that she was not given sufficient information bearing on the accusation and was thus deprived of adequate opportunity to rebut it. Moreover, the administration determined that during her terminal year she would do no teaching despite the fact that courses for her had been scheduled. It asserted that this action was not a suspension but merely a change in assignment. The Association's report concluded that the administration, in suspending her from any further teaching, effectively dismissed her without having afforded academic due process.

Litigation initiated by the faculty member resulted a year and a half ago in an out-of-court settlement described by her as highly satisfactory. Shortly thereafter, the university's academic senate charged a task force with addressing the censure. The work of the task force led to 1998 revisions in the faculty handbook and to a statement of considerations favoring removal of the censure, adopted by the academic senate and supported by the provost, that was submitted to the Association on April 9. The university's policies as now revised assure the right of any faculty member accused of misconduct to confront and question adverse witnesses. The policies also provide that the responsibilities of a faculty member on terminal appointment will be altered only by mutual agreement.

The officers of the University of Southern California AAUP chapter have written in support of censure removal, and the president of the California Conference, informed of these developments, has not indicated any reservations.

Committee A recommends to the Eighty-fifth Annual Meeting that the University of Southern California be removed from the Association's list of censured administrations.

Legislative Business

Statements and Policies for Inclusion in the 2000 Edition of the Redbook

Committee A reviewed and approved revisions in the texts of four documents that are intended for inclusion in the Association's Policy Documents and Reports (the Redbook), scheduled to be published next year. Those revised texts will be submitted to and reviewed by the Council at its November 1999 meeting, in ample time for publication. The specific documents are Post-Tenure Review: An AAUP Response; Access to Faculty Personnel Files; Tenure in the Medical School; and The "Limitations" Clause in the 1940 Statement of Principles: Some Operating Guidelines. The committee took action, as part of this review process, to resolve a discrepancy that had been noted--on the issue of access to evaluation files--between the reports on post-tenure review and on access to files. The documents are now consistent on that important and sensitive issue.

Protection of Research from Legal Liability and Compulsory Process

At its fall 1998 meeting, Committee A reviewed and approved two statements which address the growing risks that face those who are actively engaged in research. The first, a revision and expansion of a 1984 statement now entitled Institutional Responsibility for Legal Demands on Faculty, deals with the risk of litigation related to the research program. It was published in the January-February 1999 issue of Academe. The second statement deals with the risk when others, through compulsory process (discovery or subpoena, for example), seek research data, preliminary findings, and other materials vital to the program. Entitled Institutional Response to Subpoenas for Faculty Research Data, it appears immediately following this report. The two documents recognize not only the centrality of unfettered research to academic freedom but also the importance of protecting the investigator from external threats and interference. The role of the institution in providing or enhancing such protection also deserves closer attention than it has typically received.

Tenure in Legal Education

Committee A at its June meeting reacted with deep concern to a proposed change in the Standards for Accreditation of Law Schools, and conveyed that concern to the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, which was meeting that same weekend. The proposal would diminish the role of tenure in accredited law schools, by encouraging for regular full-time teaching faculty such alternatives to tenure as long-term renewable contracts. Action on the proposal was deferred until a later meeting of the ABA council.

Academic Freedom in Medical Schools

Committee A in June reviewed and endorsed a statement, Academic Freedom in the Medical School, that had been adopted at an Association-sponsored conference in Boston a few weeks earlier. The conference was titled "Academic Values in the Transformation of American Medicine." The statement, also endorsed by the Council and the 1999 annual meeting, was published in the July-August issue of Academe. It reflects the views of a representative group of medical educators and others concerned about current and growing risks to academic freedom in medical education and academic health centers. That topic has been of persistent interest to Committee A in recent years.

Confidentiality of Information Possessed by Investigating Committees

Committee A took note of the growing threat that litigation poses for members of investigating committees and their invariably sensitive files. A small subcommittee will review and recommend appropriate changes in the Association's investigative procedures. Such changes would recognize the risks that the new legal climate poses for investigating committees and the documents and materials they develop during their inquiries.

Concluding Comment

Since this year marks the close of my seven years as chair of Committee A, this is perforce my final report. In prior years, I have noted significant developments affecting the climate of academic freedom across the country--sometimes, though not always, with alarm, and occasionally with relief or even optimism (for example, the embracing of tenure by Evergreen State University and the University of Texas-Permian Basin, two erstwhile and widely cited examples of institutions that had eschewed tenure from their founding). Those trends continue to occupy a major portion of Committee A's agenda, and doubtless will draw its time and attention at future meetings chaired by my very able successor, Professor Joan Wallach Scott.
The area that may have been neglected in prior reports is the singular contribution that the AAUP and Committee A continue to make to faculty welfare and security. Several elements of Association practice and policy are as vital as they are distinctive, though easily overlooked. For one, when a troubled faculty member calls the Washington office, his or her membership status is simply not relevant; the quality of response depends not at all on any prior or present affiliation. For another, the AAUP holds even members of its own family to its very high standards--and stands ready, in extremis, to condemn institutional action urged or even demanded, in violation of those standards, by one of the Association's own chapters. Finally, the AAUP will commend actions taken by a governing board or administration that are protective of academic freedom and tenure. The most notable and public example of this is the AAUP's Alexander Meiklejohn Award for Academic Freedom. It has been my pleasure twice in the past seven years to confer the Alexander Meiklejohn Award on two presidents who courageously defended against external pressure the values that are most basic to the AAUP. Since Committee A has long been the paramount guardian of those values, the chance to play a significant role in the life of that body has been a singular honor.

Robert M. O'Neil (Law), University of Virginia, Chair

Institutional Response To Subpoenas For Faculty Research Data

The recent rise in court-based demands for faculty research data (for example, the Fischer case at the Medical College of Georgia, the Bronfenbrenner case at Cornell, and most recently the Yoffie-Cusamano case at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) suggests the value of a policy that defines an appropriate institutional role in such situations. The risk for academic freedom and the need for institutional concern are especially great where (as in the cited examples) the researcher is not a party to the litigation, but an innocent bystander in possession of data that one or both parties might find useful in court.

Whether or not the institution is named in the subpoena or other demand, it has a substantial interest in seeing that the needs of its researchers are properly presented to a court. Occasionally, such presentation may be assured without institutional involvement-for example, by an attorney retained by a commercial publisher or other entity that has a direct legal interest in resisting compelled disclosure. Most often, however, the adequacy of representation will depend on the institution's response.

To that end, it is recommended that colleges and universities adopt policies which would cover such situations and would commit the institution to an active role in protecting the academic freedom of its faculty researchers, consistent with the following guidelines:

1. Where the institution possesses the subject data, or has the legal and physical capacity to respond directly to compulsory process or other demands for such data, it should not only actively enlist the involvement of the researcher in resisting disclosure. It should also refuse to make any such disclosure, or to surrender the data, until all available legal remedies for protection of the data have been exhausted.
2. Institutions should ensure or provide (where the researcher is not otherwise represented) adequate legal representation of the research interests of its own faculty, with respect to legal demands for untimely, intrusive, disruptive, or confidence-breaching disclosure of research data or materials.
3. Such a policy should apply whether or not the institution has itself been named in the demand, and whether or not the researcher is a party to the primary legal dispute.
4. The policy should provide for payment or reimbursement of legal expenses and for satisfaction of court judgments or settlements.
5. The policy may provide for a faculty committee to make recommendations for the application of the policy to extraordinary circumstances not foreseen at the time of the adoption of a policy of general application.

Cases Settled Through Staff Mediation

The work of Committee A's staff in bringing cases to a sound resolution is illustrated in the three brief accounts that follow. Over twenty such cases were closed during the 1998-99 academic year after having been resolved through mediation by the staff.

An associate professor of medicine, serving on a one-year appointment at a medical school on the East Coast, had already accepted a new position elsewhere when he gained access to his personnel file. In it he found a memorandum from his department head, which included a statement that several of his patients had either canceled their appointments or asked not to be seen by him again. The professor, insisting that he was unaware of any such incident, requested precise details. The administration declined to provide them, whereupon the professor turned to the Association's staff for help.

The staff wrote to the medical school administration, noting that faculty personnel files, under the applicable law, are available for public use. The staff asserted that an undocumented charge by an institutional officer of patients' dissatisfaction with a physician, placed in the institution's records for anyone to see, is most unfair to the person who has thus been accused. It urged that any evidence supportive of the charge be provided to the professor promptly.

Ensuing discussions led to an acknowledgment by the department head that he had no direct evidence and could not identify any patient who allegedly complained. He conceded that he based his statement on hearsay: oral remarks by nurses and clerical staff. He removed the statement from the school's records and provided the professor with a written apology.


The administration of a liberal arts college in New England informed a tenured associate professor that she would receive no increases in salary until she merited promotion to a full professorship. She was accordingly denied a raise that was designated as across-the-board for all members of the faculty. Asked to assist, the Association's staff stated to the administration and to a grievance committee that denying the raise, especially if the intent is to do so year after year, is tantamount to a severe sanction and thus violative of tenure principles unless cause for the action is demonstrated in a hearing before a faculty body. The administration, after protracted discussions, came to accept the staff's position. The associate professor's salary was increased retroactively, as were the college's contributions to her retirement plan.


During her nearly three decades on the faculty at a community college in the South, a professor had repeatedly sought advice from the Association's staff about disputes she had had with successive college administrations. Last year, responding to over a hundred student complaints about her classroom performance, the current administration reassigned her to other work. The professor refused to accept the reassignment, whereupon the administration informed her that it had no choice other than to initiate dismissal proceedings.

The Association's staff, asked by the professor for assistance, communicated with the college president and received his assurance that the proceedings would be in accord with AAUP-recommended standards. The staff also proposed a mediated resolution as an alternative, found the president receptive, and recruited the AAUP chapter president at a nearby university to assist in the process. The professor, however, was initially hostile to any resolution that did not include full reinstatement and a presidential apology.

Proceedings commenced, and in the initial stage the elected faculty committee recommended that the administration issue charges and arrange for a formal adjudicative hearing. After the professor examined the charges and learned that a date for the hearing had been scheduled, she informed the staff that she would prefer a negotiated settlement. Through the good offices of the staff and the chapter president, a mutually acceptable resolution was achieved. The charges were withdrawn, and the professor retired from the faculty with over a year of severance salary.

"Thanks to your help and intervention," the professor subsequently wrote to the staff, "things turned out all right. I do appreciate your being there in my time of need." The president subsequently wrote to the staff that "your hard work and sincere efforts in assisting the college in reaching the settlement have been greatly appreciated. The role of the American Association of University Professors in this process has reaffirmed my respect for its high ideals and its outstanding contributions to American higher education."