Buck Wins Third Term as AAUP President
AAUP members re-elected Jane Buck for an unprecedented third term as Association president this spring. Also re-elected were incumbent officers Larry Gerber of Auburn University, Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Jeffrey Butts of Appalachian State University.
Professor emerita of psychology at Delaware State University, Buck has been an active member of the AAUP since 1965. She served as president of the Delaware conference of AAUP chapters and of her campus AAUP chapter. She is the first national AAUP leader to be elected from a historically black university and the first president elected from an institution engaged in collective bargaining. "To be the first person to be elected to a third term as AAUP president is an honor beyond any I could have imagined when I joined the Association as a graduate student," Buck says.
"Budget cuts, the exploitation of contingent faculty, and continuing attacks on tenure and academic freedom present serious challenges to the quality of education that we will be able to offer to the increasing number of students entering our colleges and universities," Buck observes. "The Association will continue to meet these challenges as it has met others for almost a hundred years."
Larry Gerber, a history professor, was elected first vice president for a second term. Before his election as a national AAUP officer, Gerber was president of the Auburn University chapter of the AAUP and of the Association's Alabama conference. He has also served as chair of the Committee on College and University Governance and as a member of the national AAUP Council.
"We must make the case to those outside our own ranks that to maintain quality education in our colleges and universities we must preserve shared governance as well as academic freedom and tenure," Gerber says. He believes the AAUP should also combat the "corporatization" of higher education. "Corporatization entails not only a top-down style of management in which the professoriate is deprofessionalized," he says, "but also a devaluing of the humane ideals of a liberal education as students are turned into 'customers' and concerns about quality give way to quantifiable measures of 'productivity.'"
Cary Nelson, professor of English, was elected second vice president for a third term. Nelson has served on the national AAUP Council and is current chair of the Committee on Academic Professionals. He is also a member of the Academe advisory board. "We must begin a new campaign to convince all faculty that AAUP membership is the only national insurance policy for academic freedom," Nelson says. "Our committees continue to produce the most well-reasoned and reliable statements of academic principles and policy. We must convince faculty that this effort is critical to everyone's professional survival."
Jeffrey Butts, a biology professor, was elected secretary-treasurer for a second term. He served as chair of his campus AAUP chapter, as president of his state AAUP conference, and as chair of the Assembly of State Conferences. "The Association must solidify and strengthen its membership base to continue its important work defending academic freedom, due process, and shared governance," Butts says.
All of the officers will serve two-year terms. The AAUP also elected new members to its national Council, the governing body of the Association. They were elected from ten geographical districts and will serve three-year terms. The Council meets twice a year to determine Association policy.
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