“For more than ninety years the American Association of University Professors has been engaged in developing standards for sound academic practice and in working for the acceptance of these standards by the community of higher education. The Association has long been viewed as the authoritative voice of the academic profession in this regard.”
From the Introduction to AAUP’s Policy Documents & Reports (the Redbook).
Faculty establish a local AAUP chapter to serve as a bulwark against the erosion of faculty governance and the expansion of top-down decision-making. Other faculty organize (or re-organize) a chapter in response to a crisis. The visible presence of an AAUP chapter is an important vehicle for maintaining sound academic policies and professional standards within institutions; this is why faculty at many institutions have maintained AAUP chapters for decades.
The reasons and circumstances differ. However, there are a few constants. Effective chapters focus on the everyday working conditions relevant to faculty across their institutions, as well as broader issues such as the strength of academic freedom, shared governance, due process, and tenure rights on campus. The policies advocated by the AAUP provide a ready-made and coherent agenda for faculty who may otherwise find it difficult to coalesce. This guidebook is designed to avail new AAUP chapter leaders with an introduction to the AAUP’s diverse work, and the resources and know-how to organize and develop a strong chapter.
read the complete Introduction
Background and Orientation
AAUP Glossary
AAUP Officers and Staff Contacts
Policy Statements and Reports and Related Activities
The collection of AAUP’s most important policy statements and reports is the AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports, better known as the Redbook. Every chapter should have a copy. Because the book is published by Johns Hopkins University Press, the AAUP has license to publish only a small number of the statements and reports that are contained in the Redbook at its web site. Those documents that are posted on line can be used freely.
1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (with 1970 Interpretive Comments)
Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities
Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession
Order mini-Redbooks, which contain the policy documents listed above.
Many of the reports published by the AAUP over the years are the work of AAUP’s standing committees.
AAUP’s well-known faculty salary survey is the product of the AAUP’s Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession.
The Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work was produced by the Committee on Women in the Academic Profession.
AAUP’s important Statement on Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession was a joint effort by the committees on Academic Freedom and Tenure and Contingent Faculty and the Profession.
The Committee on Government Relations is active on many fronts including commentary on current legislative and regulatory developments affecting higher education and the profession. See the committee’s response to the Spellings Commission Report. Additionally, you may read AAUP’s monthly updates from AAUP’s government relations office and subscribe to the newsletter.
For many years, AAUP has filed amicus curiae briefs in cases of special importance to higher education and to faculty. For a summary of cases in which AAUP has participated, please see the list of amicus briefs filed during the years 2005 – 2007.
The best known of AAUP’s reports are its investigative reports of violations of elemental AAUP policies. Some of these reports, with the recommendation of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the vote of the Annual Meeting, lead to the censure of the offending administrations. See the list of censured administrations, with links to the underlying investigative reports.
Hundreds of other AAUP investigative reports are compiled in a compact disc which can be purchased through the AAUP’s online catalogue.
Recent investigative reports, even in instances in which censure has not been imposed are also posted at the web site. See for example, Report of an AAUP Special Committee: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans Universities, the largest-scale investigation ever conducted by the AAUP which involved the actions taken by the administrations of five institutions in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Organizing Tools and Templates
The Basics: Guidelines for Forming a New AAUP Chapter
The websites of other local AAUP chapters can serve as useful resources (and templates) as you develop your own chapter program.
Learn from what other chapters have done and are doing:
Designing your Chapter Website
Establishing Chapter Dues
6 Chapter Development Tools & 66 Ways to Implement Them
Membership Recruitment Strategies
Office Visit overview
Each chapter will want to prepare its own recruitment letters and other communications. Please bear in mind that part-time faculty and graduate student members have full voting rights within national AAUP, and our constitution requires that AAUP chapters follow suit. [Your chapter may decide to include Associate members as well.] To give you something of a head start, please see:
Sample Departmental Membership Recruitment Letter
Sample Membership Renewal Letter to Lapsed Member
Sample Recruitment Letter to New Faculty
Sample Recruitment Letter to Part-Time Faculty
Sample Recruitment Letter to Graduate Students
To better understand how the chapter can develop into a forceful advocate for the faculty and for the profession at your institution, please see:
Negotiating Salary and Benefits Outside Collective Bargaining by Patrick Shaw, Dept. of Organizing & Services
Faculty Representation without Collective Bargaining (a chapter of Academic Collective Bargaining, edited by Ernst Benjamin and Michael Mauer)
Recruitment and Informational Materials available from the AAUP National Office
AAUP’s national office has prepared trifold brochures for general membership and specific constituency recruitment efforts. Please fill out an order form to request any of national AAUP’s brochures, trifolds, posters, and other materials.
AAUP Tools and Resources
The AAUP provides faculty guidebooks on issues ranging from Family Medical Leave Act policies to improving faculty governance on campus. You may order these guides, along with other AAUP publications, from our website catalogue.
AAUP chapters and state conferences follow specific management policies. For information on these guidelines, please see:
Managing Chapter and Conference Taxes and Business Affairs
Informational Alert: IRS Filing Obligations
FAQ on IRS filing requirements
Guidelines for Chapters and State Conferences
Training Activities
The AAUP offers training events to help chapter activists from advocacy and collective bargaining chapters to mobilize and maintain their organizing efforts. The Summer Institute (SI) is our premier training event, taking place every summer at a different campus location. Read the detailed program description from this past year’s SI.
The Assembly of State Conferences (ASC) sponsors a New Leadership training every October. New and emerging chapter and state conference leaders from around the country come to Washington DC to meet with AAUP national leaders and staff, learn more about the AAUP, and exchange ideas they can apply immediately on returning to their home campus. This training is geared toward newly elected officers, as well as members who are looking forward to taking a more active role in their chapter or conference. Please see our program from this year’s fall ASC Leadership training session.
AAUP Gear
AAUP offers a range of recruitment items, for sale or order from our national website, including Redbooks, Guidebooks, t-shirts, posters, sticker rounds, pins, and bags. See our online catalogue for online purchase or order of other items.