Recognizing the benefits of international exchanges among scholars and students, the AAUP has a long-standing commitment to fostering academic freedom and openness in international scholarly communication. In recent years, the Association has worked on several fronts to address issues of concern in global higher education and to facilitate international ties among faculty and students: by joining in litigation to protest exclusion of foreign scholars, advocating on behalf of threatened scholars, contributing to international policy discussions, developing statements and comments about issues of concern, raising awareness of higher education worldwide, defending the free exchange of ideas, forming partnerships with international faculty groups, meeting with foreign scholars, and lobbying.
In recent years, many foreign citizens have been barred from the United States when they sought to travel here to attend academic conferences, take up faculty posts, or perform other scholarly work. This alarming trend is at odds with fundamental AAUP principles and our nation’s historic commitment to the free exchange of ideas.
In January 2010, Secretary of state Hillary Clinton signed orders (.pdf) that effectively end the exclusion of two prominent scholars previously barred from the United States. In separate lawsuits, the American Association of University Professors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations had challenged the denial of visas to Adam Habib, the deputy vice chancellor of research, innovation, and advancement at the University of Johannesburg, and Tariq Ramadan, chair of contemporary Islamic studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.
In November 2005, the AAUP joined the American Civil Liberties Union and the PEN American Center in a lawsuit against the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking the prompt release of records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in March 2005. Read more.
The AAUP’s participation in an international coalition of faculty organizations helped to win the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s acceptance in 1997 of a recommendation defining academic freedom and other faculty rights and responsibilities. The recommendation encompasses in one document many of the policies of the AAUP on academic freedom, institutional governance, and collective bargaining.
The AAUP has also raised concerns about the inclusion of higher education in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Adopted by the member nations of the World Trade Organization in 1994, GATS establishes a process that encourages the removal of barriers to “trade in services,” including higher education. In negotiations over the agreement, the AAUP urged against U.S. export of distance education products marketed as higher education courses unless those courses would be accepted for transfer credits in the United States. Without such an assurance, the Association argued, our trading partners risk receiving low-quality commercial products that bear no relationship to the U.S. higher education system.
The AAUP has affiliation agreements with major faculty associations in Canada (the Canadian Association of University Teachers), the United Kingdom (the Association of University Teachers), Australia (the National Tertiary Education Union), and Denmark (the Danish Association of Masters and PhDs). The Association also works closely with other faculty organizations worldwide, including those with which it does not have formal affiliation agreements. These include the Association of University Staff in New Zealand, the Fédération Québecoise des Professeures et Professeurs d’Université in Canada, the Swedish Association of University Teachers, and the Irish Federation of University Teachers.
The AAUP regularly hosts international scholars and students or participates in events involving them that are sponsored by organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, the Institute of International Education, and the Meridian International Center.