From the General Secretary: A Fond Farewell

By Mary A. Burgan

In 1994, I signed on as AAUP general secretary for a three-year term because I was not sure that I could be happy away from teaching and research. By the time the first three years had passed, though, I realized that I could not in good conscience leave the job. Tenure was under attack, frontally by managerial zealots, and through a side door labeled "part-time faculty" (frequently unlocked by tenured faculty). The hype about distance education was a further threat; its emphasis on software over teachers undermined our notions not only of a securely tenured professoriate but also of real communities of learning. In a growing notion of thought as commodity, ownership of ideas was also up for grabs—for patenting, name branding, and sale. Finally, faculty governance in many schools was enervated—subsumed into increasingly marginal systems of inconsequential palaver. Tenured faculty were facing retirement without the assurance that new generations of tenured academic citizens would take their places.

Times have not changed much since 1994. But I am pleased that the AAUP's responses to them have been articulate in policy and forceful in execution. For example, I take pride in our efforts in behalf of all professors at historically black colleges and universities and at religiously affiliated schools, where AAUP allegiances have sometimes been viewed with suspicion. I am also proud that major policy statements claiming academic rights and responsibilities for part-time faculty and academic professionals were prepared during my term.

Needless to add, I did not write the statements myself; that work was performed by committed AAUP members and an extraordinarily gifted staff. In this past decade, I have seen that a generosity of energy, commitment, and idealism marks our AAUP leaders and staff. Because of them, I've been assured that our tradition will be safe in the future. My successor, Roger Bowen, takes on one of the most difficult and rewarding jobs in higher education, but he will have many good allies in his task.

And so, here at the end of my term, I want to address the challenges that the AAUP must continue to engage. One, of course, is the necessity to continuously recruit new members; our dependence on too few of our colleagues for support shadows not only our own future, but also that of other organizations around the country. The fact that the AAUP has slightly increased and then held membership steady in the past ten years is itself remarkable. But while staying steady is an achievement, it leaves minimal resources for new initiatives in the work we do.

Membership is an internal challenge. More important, however, are external challenges. These include expanding our efforts on the international scene so that the globalization of education will be directed by a worldwide professoriate that can defend rather than diminish academic freedom. And then there is our need to respond to the increasing pressure for collective bargaining by faculties that see their independence under attack. In encouraging them in their efforts, our staff and leaders have defined academic unionism as holding participatory democracy to be intrinsic to the maintenance of academic freedom. To further such progressive aims, we must find new ways to help faculty understand the importance of volunteering for service in the governance of their unions as well as their senates.

But most of all, we must continue to defend those faculty who actually use their freedom fearlessly in colleges and universities everywhere. That defense of individuals has been one of our founding activities, and it can never become secondary to any of our other enterprises. Among all the things I've observed in the past decade, I value most the examples of those academics who have borne the isolation of the gadfly and the humiliation of the scapegoat, and yet maintained the courage of the reformer in speaking truth to power.

Having grown up in the backwoods coal-mining areas of West Virginia, I formed a notion that I would be at ease in the great world if I could be more cosmopolitan—a world traveler, knowing about differences in people and places. I have now visited campuses in all but six states in our union, and I've met with faculty leaders in some famous cities abroad. Wherever I've gone, I've found colleagues who speak a common language and share common aspirations. And so I believe that I have finally arrived. To the many guides who have brought me to this point, I can only offer my thanks and love.

 Printer-Friendly Page