January-February 2000

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AAUP Solidifies Ties with International Faculty

By Hans Johnson

Many of the issues up for discussion at the Second International Conference on Higher Education and Research sounded all too familiar to the AAUP representatives on hand: threats to academic freedom, faculty governance, and other principles faculty members hold dear. The conference, held in Budapest last September, allowed AAUP leaders and staff to join faculty colleagues from around the world in a discussion of matters of common concern. "It was important for us to attend," says AAUP president James Richardson, "because similar problems and challenges confront professors worldwide. We can learn from our colleagues’ efforts to address these problems in their countries, and they can learn from our experience. And we can deal with some issues collectively."

Estelle Gellman, chair of the Association’s Collective Bargaining Congress, and Patrick Shaw, director of the AAUP’s Department of Organizing and Services, accompanied Richardson to Budapest, where the AAUP distributed materials, including recent policy statements on distance education and intellectual property.

The conference, sponsored by Education International (EI), attracted nearly a hundred delegates from African nations, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Russia, the United Kingdom, and other countries. EI is a federation of international education unions that includes well over a hundred teacher and faculty organizations. (For details about EI, consult the organization’s Web site www.ei-ie.org.)

In plenary sessions and workshops, delegates discussed collective bargaining, diversity and discrimination, and other topics. "Many of the issues raised by our international colleagues," says Gellman, "parallel those we’re addressing in the AAUP. Delegates had special concerns, for example, about challenges to academic freedom posed by the abolition or lack of tenure in some countries and the widespread increase in part-time faculty. They also talked about problems of research funding and the need to ensure quality in distance education."

"I was pleased," notes Shaw, "to see that the delegates adopted an activist EI agenda to deal with such issues. Their doing so shows that we are establishing an international mechanism to address problems and threats that are transnational."

Richardson reports that he invited conference participants to continue the dialogue at the AAUP annual meeting in Washington, D.C., June 8–11. Enough participants expressed an interest in coming to the meeting to warrant a special session on international concerns, according to Richardson. The session, which will be organized and sponsored by the Collective Bargaining Congress, will involve EI delegates from several countries.

In addition to attending sessions, the conference delegates passed several resolutions. One called on the director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization to complete a "comprehensive report on the world situation with regard to academic freedom and respect for the human rights of higher education teaching personnel." Another resolution opposed "proposals which make commercialization a fundamental mission of higher education" and decried "attempts to vest the ownership of intellectual property produced by publicly funded higher education . . . personnel with private sector corporations without regard for the public good and the contractually guaranteed rights and academic freedom right of researchers."

An additional resolution condemned the harassment and arrest of higher-education employees in Ethiopia, including Taye Woldesmiate, president of the Ethiopia Teachers’ Association, who is in prison for his union activities. Yet another resolution condemned the recent violence in East Timor and urged that EI affiliates and the international community support East Timorese students in their efforts to complete their education abroad, with the educational system in East Timor at least temporarily destroyed.

Finally, the conference expressed grave concern that the free-market model adopted by the World Trade Organization in its negotiations over the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will harm public education, including higher education. The conference called for full participation of faculty organizations in any discussions related to including educational services in GATS.