Rarely has higher education faced challenges as serious as those it confronts today. Attempts to suppress free expression in the wake of September 11, 2001; the interference of state legislatures in academic work; and the attempted censorship of the sciences and creative arts by special-interest ideologues have all evoked vigorous responses from the Association. No less intense has been the AAUP’s continuing resistance to the erosion of tenure and the shameful exploitation of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty. The Association’s statements on such issues serve as the ethical touchstones for a noble profession which understands that its primary purpose —teaching learners in pursuit of the common good —is not a private enterprise but a public trust.
Since 1915, the Association has given shape to American higher education by insisting on academic freedom as its defining characteristic. The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued jointly by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities, remains the definitive description of academic free speech for the American academy. More than 200 scholarly and educational organizations have endorsed it, and educational institutions around the world aspire to meet its standards.
In addition, court decisions often cite the 1940 Statement and other policy documents, and the AAUP’s friend-of-the-court briefs address the significant educational issues of our times. The Association also works to promote effective higher education legislation and to advance the profession and the purposes of higher education in the public eye. The Association recently issued public statements on distance education, intellectual property, contingent faculty, graduate student education, faculty work and family responsibilities, and academic freedom and national security. Each year, it publishes an annual survey of faculty salaries and compensation.
In the international arena, the Association collaborates with other organizations that have similar interests, such as Human Rights Watch, Scholars at Risk,the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund, and the London-based Network for Education and Academic Rights. The AAUP is committed to using its experience and expertise in championing the cause of academic freedom around the world.
A 501(c)(3) charitable organization, the Association serves the profession specifically and the higher education community generally rather than the individual members. Our services are available to all academics, regardless of AAUP membership status. Active chapters of the AAUP exist at more than five hundred accredited colleges and universities in the United States. These chapters promote principles and programs that vitally affect the quality of professional life in the academy and the general well-being of higher education.
Believing that departures from sound academic standards injure the entire academic profession and the education the public receives, the Association publishes reports on specific cases when events at colleges and universities raise serious issues of academic freedom, tenure, due process, or faculty governance. The first of these reports was issued in 1916; as a body, the reports represent a jurisprudential history of academic freedom in America. The AAUP publishes them in its bimonthly magazine, Academe, one of the nation’s most important journals of cross-disciplinary thinking about higher education.
The staff at the AAUP’s national office answers well over a thousand requests for advice and assistance from faculty members and administrators each year, most of whom are not members of the Association. Such service to the academic community would not be possible without the assistance of volunteer faculty leaders —including a cohort of some two hundred members who serve on twenty-eight standing and eleven ad hoc committees.This grassroots membership, comprising some of the most distinguished academics in American higher education, constitutes a precious endowment of talent and service.
The AAUP’s goals continue to be clear and focused:the staunch defense of academic freedom and its major bulwarks, tenure and collegial governance; the articulation in the public policy and judicial arenas of the unique and critical role higher education plays in our society;and the promulgation of Association principles and values to a global audience. These goals are lofty but difficult to achieve without the substantial support of friends of higher education, both in and outside the academy.
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