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From the General Secretary: Campaign for the Common Good
By Roger Bowen
As the American Association of University Professors prepares to celebrate the anniversary of its founding ninety years ago, it cannot be too cheeky to indulge in self-congratulations for all the good the Association has done. The AAUP has waged a nonstop battle in defense of tenure, shared governance, and procedural standards that define the meaning of justice within the academy. Our writings serve as the academy's benchmarks, the ethical touchstones for the noblest of professions. The AAUP acts as the exemplar of all that is right about a profession whose primary purpose is teaching learners in pursuit of the common good.
The AAUP is the only organization in the nation that always stands ready to assist any college or university faculty member whose professional standing is threatened, who has been disciplined for professing honestly, or who has been treated unfairly because an administration has failed to abide by generally accepted standards. Faculty in trouble—full time, tenured, untenured, part time, adjuncts, and teaching and graduate assistants—can and do come to us from small private colleges, large public research universities, community colleges, religiously affiliated universities, and professional schools. We do not ask for proof of membership before helping embattled colleagues; we ask only for information that will permit us to help.
The AAUP is to America's professoriate, then, what the American Civil Liberties Union is to those Americans whose constitutional rights have been violated: a watchdog, a friendly ear, an aggressive defender. The AAUP protects, defends, and advocates for "academic liberties" because we recognize, as first claimed by one of our founders, John Dewey, that "the point where democracy and education intersect is the point we call community." The AAUP's slogan sums up this notion nicely: "Academic Freedom for a Free Society."
At a time when the academy is being corporatized, when faculties are being "downsized," when academic programs are being "restructured," and when contingent faculty out-number tenured faculty almost two to one, the AAUP is being called on more frequently to deal with what founder Arthur Lovejoy called "academic crimes" against academic freedom. To fight such "crimes" effectively, the AAUP must increase its annual fund and build an endowment to support our major areas of operation.
All members of the profession should want to support our mission. Taking out membership is the first and most immediate way to support the AAUP, as our 45,000 contributing members recognize. But if the AAUP is to bolster services at this critical period in the academy's history, and if it is to continue helping nonmember faculty whose careers are threatened, the AAUP will require greater levels of financial support from all faculty and all friends of academic freedom nationwide.
Although our endowment is small, several funds already exist: the Academic Freedom Fund, which we use to assist faculty members whose freedom to profess has been threatened; the Legal Defense Fund, which helps faculty facing legal expenses; the Contingent Faculty Fund, which assists faculty working to promote a stable, full-time professoriate; and the Henry T. Yost Fund, which provides a modest stipend to a policy fellow or intern in the national office. The purposes of these funds speak directly to the mission of the AAUP; they must be expanded, and newer ones perhaps added, to reflect trends such as globalization. If, for example, the AAUP enlarges the meaning of the common good to global dimensions, then an endowed fund to defend academic freedom around the world should be created.
The national AAUP staff and the elected leadership are just beginning to make the case for a national capital campaign, the elements of which will be based on the strategic planning now under way. Planning will be driven by our mission, and the goals will undoubtedly be in step with our past accomplishments. Who we are, and what we will become, are extensions of a history replete with battles fought to protect the profession.
We begin our quest in our ninetieth year of existence to build our endowed funds by soliciting our membership—the same faculty members who have continually supported the AAUP's annual fund over a great many years, namely, our loyalists. We ask you to be generous. I hope that one of the existing endowed funds will be sufficiently in synch with your own passions to merit your financial support. But most of all, I hope our Campaign for the Common Good will remind your colleagues that only the AAUP exists to serve all the nation's faculty.
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