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Former AAUP President David Fellman Dies
David Fellman, Vilas Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and one of the AAUP’s foremost leaders for half a century, died on November 23, 2003, at age 96. Fellman won widespread acclaim as an authority in constitutional law and a champion of academic freedom. His many books include The Limits of Freedom and The Defendant’s Rights. He taught the first course offered in the United States on civil liberties.
The first of the many AAUP offices held by Fellman was the presidency of the University of Wisconsin chapter, back when Harry Truman was president of the United States. Fellman’s AAUP service on the national level began with his chairing an investigating committee. In 1958, he was elected to the Council and appointed to Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He was a prominent member of Committee A for fourteen years, serving for five years as its chair. He served as the Association’s president from 1964 to 1966. Becoming increasingly convinced that the AAUP needed to enhance its role in shaping higher education law, Fellman took the lead in 1975 in founding the AAUP’s Legal Defense Fund, chairing the fund’s governing board until stepping down at age 90.
Sanford H. Kadish, professor and dean emeritus at Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, was appointed to Committee A by Fellman. Like Fellman, he served successively as chair of the committee and as AAUP president. He remembers Fellman as follows: “David Fellman was one of the great hearts of the AAUP, a fellow who could proclaim before a large audience, ‘I want you to know that there never is a mistake in a Committee A report.’ A buoyant spirit was David, unflappable, indefatigable, a man of selfless devotion to the great liberal principles and to the AAUP, which he saw as embodying them.”
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