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AAUP Censure List
Sidney Toby
To The Editor:
Academe regularly publishes a list of administrations of colleges and universities that have been censured by the AAUP because of evidence that they have not observed the generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure. If we plot the number of citations of censured administrations for a particular year against that year, there is clearly an increase with time, but the data are too scattered for any quantitative conclusion. If, however, we plot the number of citations over a five-year period against that period, then we obtain a reasonably smooth line with much less scatter. The line corresponds to an approximately tenfold increase in citations from 1965 to 2000. I raise the question of what causes this striking increase. Most of the citations are due to cases related to tenure, but the increase is not likely to be a result of general financial constrictions on institutions, because the thirty-five years cover both recessions and economic expansion.
A study of data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that student enrollment increased by 66 percent and the number of degree-granting institutions by 47 percent from 1965 to 2000—not nearly enough to account for the tenfold citation increase. The cause could be an increased tendency of institutions to reduce the level of protection provided by academic tenure, or it could be that the AAUP has become more vigilant in finding violations. My feeling is that it’s probably a combination of both, but it is a trend that should be watched.
Sidney Toby
(Chemistry and Chemical Biology)
Rutgers University
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