2006 Annual Meeting Explored Faculty’s Public Image
The public perception of faculty, work and family responsibilities, and challenges facing higher education today was addressed by panelists, speakers, and participants at the Ninety-second Annual Meeting of the AAUP, held June 8–11 in Washington, D.C.
The meeting featured two panel presentations. More than seventy-five people attended “The Faculty, the Press, and the Public,” which was moderated by Scott Jaschik, a reporter for Inside Higher Ed, and featured presentations by Neil Gross of Harvard University; Solon Simmons of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Maurine Beasley of the University of Maryland; Carol Simpson Stern of Northwestern University, and John Curtis, the AAUP’s research director. Panelists discussed the results of an AAUP-commissioned study, “Americans’ Views of Political Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom,” that was conducted by Gross and Simmons. The study shows that although Americans continue to express strong confidence in higher education, “some of its Teflon coating may have worn off” when it comes to resisting criticism. Curtis discussed the relatively weak support for academic freedom among the general public, the related challenge of explaining tenure as a means to protect academic freedom, and differing perspectives on the primary purpose of higher education. Jaschik suggested that, to address these issues, faculty members should cultivate relationships with local reporters. He also advised faculty members and the AAUP to present more examples of the valuable work that faculty do. One audience member suggested that, to counter the growing consumerist view of higher education, faculty could stress the skills required of educated people rather than just the credential that is awarded.
“Faculty Life, Private and Professional: The Fifth Anniversary of the Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work,” was presented by Ann Higginbotham of Eastern Connecticut State University, who chairs the AAUP’s Committee on Women in the Academic Profession; Joanna Grossman of Hofstra University Law School; and Anna Bellisari of Wright State University. Higginbotham reviewed the history of the Association’s antidiscrimination policies beginning in the 1970s, as well as the later turn toward family issues affecting women in academia, while Grossman reviewed laws and statutes governing family and medical leave. Bellisari recounted on her experience as part of the bargaining team that successfully negotiated paid family leave for faculty at Wright State.
At a plenary luncheon, Stanley Katz, professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said that the U.S. professoriate is best seen as a series of communities about which there are multiple stereotypes, some positive and some negative. In the same way, he said, there are multiple public audiences. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to communicating with the public,” Katz said. Instead of focusing on an “imagined everyone,” professors should concentrate on more local audiences, such as college and university staff, students, and administrators. The goal is to convey what is valuable about the U.S. system of higher education.
“Because we can’t be everything to everyone,” Katz commented, “we must choose our issues and self-presentations carefully.” Katz described the AAUP as a “vital organization,” and said that faculty should be more vocal in explaining its role in defending academic freedom and fair labor practices. Katz is president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies.
In another luncheon address, Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, countered the arguments of those complaining of left-wing bias in the academy. “Few Americans know what academic freedom is and why it matters,” Bérubé said, explaining the ability of radical right-wing activist David Horowitz to persuade state legislators to consider claims of widespread violation of the academic freedom of conservative students on U.S. campuses. “Horowitz has reinterpreted academic freedom to be a right of students not to hear certain ideas,” Bérubé said. “We’re dealing with a program that is trying to obfuscate what academic freedom is.”
Academic freedom pertains to the right of faculty members to teach diverse views based on their professional expertise, and it comes with obligations enforced by their peers. Most U.S. colleges and universities have procedures for hearing student complaints about indoctrination, unfair grading, and other denials of student rights. Despite Horowitz’s claims, Bérubé said, there has not been a “flood of students complaining about liberal professors. At Penn State, we’ve had thirteen complaints over the past five years in a statewide system of 80,000 students and 8,000 professors. And those thirteen complaints don’t fit any clear pattern, either—one student charged that a professor was too conservative.”
Bérubé said that critics such as Horowitz do not distinguish between the idea of unconscious bias and that of conscious, articulate conviction. “The language of bias is not very well suited to the work of, say, a researcher who has spent decades investigating American drug policy and who has come to conclusions that amount more or less to ‘liberal’ critiques of current policy. Such conclusions are not ‘bias’; rather, they are legitimate, well-founded beliefs, and of ideally, along with legitimate competing beliefs—in college classrooms.” Moreover, he said, “the idea that there are only two sides to every question is pernicious. Typically, there are many sides.”
The plenary dinner address was delivered by Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Romero stepped in to give the address when it became clear that the originally invited speaker, Tariq Ramadan, would not be granted a visa by the United States. Ramadan, a widely respected Islamic studies professor, was also invited to address last year’s meeting and was unable to obtain a travel visa; he addressed the meeting through recorded remarks and a live feed.
Romero described how Ramadan, a Swiss national who visited the United States frequently to lecture and attend conferences until fall 2004, was prevented from taking up a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace when the U.S. government revoked his visa a few weeks before his appointment was to begin. Neither the professor nor the university received an explanation, but a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security told the press that the visa was revoked “because of a section in federal law that applies to aliens who have used a ‘position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.’” This language appears in section 411 of the USA Patriot Act, and is known as the “ideological exclusion” provision. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the AAUP, the American Academy of Religion, and the PEN American Center challenging the constitutionality of this provision.
Romero also spoke about the importance of government accountability and transparency in a democracy; government officials should not be able, he said, to imprison people, interrogate them, or bar them from the country without giving good reasons.
A special feature of the 2006 Annual Meeting was a screening of the award-winning documentary Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Participants also enjoyed watching the finalists’ productions in the Film Your Issue competition.
Censure Actions
Delegates to the annual meeting voted to place New Mexico Highlands University on its list of censured administrations. Censure by the AAUP informs the academic community that the administration of an institution has not adhered to generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure. For further information on New Mexico Highlands, see the investigating committee’s report in the May–June 2006 issue of Academe.
Annual meeting delegates also voted to remove from the censure list five institutions: Des Moines University in Iowa, which was censured in 1977; Westminster College in Utah, censured in 1985; Maryland Institute College of Art, censured in 1988; Nyack College in New York, censured in 1995; and the Community College of Baltimore County-Essex, censured in 1995. For more information about the institutions removed from censure, see “Developments Relating to Censure by the Association” in the May–June 2006 issue of Academe.
The annual meeting voted to take no action against the administrations of Greenville College in Illinois and the City University of New York and, after much debate, voted to postpone indefinitely a motion to censure the administration of Medaille College in New York and a motion to condemn the administration. Forty-three institutions are now on the censure list.
Capitol Hill Day
Many conference attendees participated in Capitol Hill Day on June 8. After an orientation session organized by the AAUP’s government relations department, groups of AAUP members from different states visited their senators and representatives to discuss the importance of higher education.
The day ended with a reception in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill to honor Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota with the Henry T. Yost Award. In conferring the award, the AAUP’s Committee on Government Relations honored McCollum’s consistent support for education. A former social science teacher, McCollum has been a strong proponent of public education at all levels, and has worked to keep quality higher education affordable and accessible. McCollum argues that the high cost of tuition should never prevent a qualified student from getting a college education, and she has called on her colleagues in Congress to support the kind of serious investment that America must make to ensure college access for all students and to remain the world’s economic leader. Without the partnership of government in increasing access to higher education, she argues, the United States will not be able to keep up with the demand for quality teachers, social workers, or nurses, nor will it have the means to interest young people in public service.
Honors and Awards
The Ralph S. Brown Award for Shared Governance was awarded to Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey, in recognition of her successful efforts to make shared governance at her institution a genuinely collegial and collaborative endeavor. In nominating her for the Brown Award, faculty and staff members at the college spoke in glowing terms of Gitenstein’s leadership in bringing about a radical transformation of both the spirit and the content of governance at the college.
In her acceptance speech, Gitenstein said that higher education does the most important work in the world, and that, while shared governance may not be the most efficient form of governance, it is ultimately the most effective. She spoke about the importance of explaining the special values and processes of higher education to boards of trustees, many of whom come from the corporate arena and are accustomed to top-down governance structures.
The Brown Award is given to American college or university administrators or trustees “in recognition of an outstanding contribution to shared governance.” It was established in 1998 in memory of Ralph S. Brown, who served as AAUP president and general counsel and headed many AAUP committees during his forty-four years of service to the Association. The award is not conferred annually; the Association reserves the distinction for those occasions when some accomplishment in the area of shared governance is identified as so outstanding as to merit being singled out.
Ralph K. M. Haurwitz and Laura Heinauer of the Austin American-Statesman were this year’s recipients of the Iris Molotsky Award for Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education. The winning entry, “Falling Short: Problems in Texas Higher Education” was a five-part series on the challenges facing higher education in Texas. In his acceptance speech, Haurwitz spoke about these challenges, which include a growing population, a tradition of low taxes coupled with political pressure to cut property taxes, and competing priorities for state funding. (Heinauer was unable to attend the meeting.)
State Conferences
George Lang of Fairfield University was re-elected treasurer of the Assembly of State Conferences, and Judith Johnston of Rider College was elected secretary. Susan Peterson of Curry College was elected at-large member of the ASC executive committee.
The ASC presented its annual awards recognizing exceptional service to the AAUP and to the profession.The Al Sumberg Award, which is presented to a person or organization that has been particularly effective in lobbying on issues furthering the interests of higher education or in furthering such lobbying efforts on the state level, went to Dana Waller of Front Range Community College of Colorado.
The Ohio AAUP conference received the ASC Award for the Outstanding Conference Web Page.The Wright State University AAUP chapter received the ASC Award for the Outstanding Chapter Web Page. The New Jersey conference received the ASC Award for the Outstanding Conventional-Style Conference Newsletter, and the Nevada Faculty Alliance received the ASC Award for the Outstanding Tabloid-Style Conference Newsletter. The Outstanding Chapter Newsletter Award went to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Hopper Travel grants, which are given to individuals attending their first annual meeting, went to Joan Williamson of Delaware State University and Charles Moore of Kansas State University.
Collective Bargaining
Louis Kirschenbaum of the University of Rhode Island was elected treasurer of the Collective Bargaining Congress and Deanna Wood of the University of New Hampshire was elected secretary. Carl Schaefer of the University of Connecticut was re-elected and David Witt of the University of Akron and Joel Russell of Oakland University were elected as at-large members of the Executive Committee of the Collective Bargaining Congress.
Marilyn Sternberg Awards, which are given annually to the AAUP members who best demonstrate a concern for human rights, courage, persistence, political foresight, and collective bargaining skills, went to Rodger Govea of Cleveland State University. Govea was honored for his service to the AAUP on all levels—local, state, and national—over the past decade. He led the effort to establish a faculty union at Cleveland State in 1992 and 1993, meeting tirelessly with members of the campus community to assuage fears and mediate conflicts, and has served in the chapter leadership ever since. Govea also served as an adviser for two other successful collective bargaining campaigns in Ohio and works on behalf of the state’s contingent faculty. He has served on several national AAUP committees, on the AAUP Council and Executive Committee, and as an officer of the Collective Bargaining Congress
Resolutions
Members approved two resolutions during the annual meeting. They appear below.
Academic Freedom and Government Restraints
In the last few years, increased restrictions that the federal government has placed on scholarly activities have presented serious challenges to academic freedom. First, in the name of national security, foreign scholars who have been appointed to faculty positions at American universities or invited to academic conferences have been denied visas on the basis of their perceived political beliefs or associations. Second, even though the administration concedes that too many government documents have been classified, it has nonetheless raised the number of classified documents to record levels and has removed previously unclassified documents from the public domain. Third, in a specific case government agents investigated a faculty member who is critical of U.S. policy toward Venezuela. Investigators questioned the content of his courses, and raised the possibility that his views had been improperly influenced by the interference of a foreign government. Agents interviewed not only the faculty member, but his students as well.
Actions such as these threaten and curtail academic freedom. They restrain scholars and teachers from pursuing truth and expressing it as they deem appropriate. This annual meeting reaffirms the views on academic freedom expressed by previous annual meetings and in reports of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure that in these critical times the need is for more, not less, freedom of inquiry and expression. It considers the encouragement of these freedoms to be essential to our national well-being.
Jane Buck
Jane Buck is the first president of the American Association of University Professors to have served for three two-year terms. In this service, she has advocated the Association’s principles at home and abroad. Her efforts in behalf of historically black colleges and universities, before and during her presidency, have been especially noteworthy. So also has been her defense of the rights of graduate students and contingent faculty members. In all, she has led us with patience, good humor, and a constant insistence that we wait our parliamentary turn before speaking during Association meetings. This annual meeting expresses its gratitude for her contributions, and confidently anticipates that her energy and dedication will continue to be at the service of the AAUP.
Fifty-Year AAUP Members Honored
At the 2006 annual meeting, the AAUP recognized the fifty-year members listed below. They have given countless hours to the profession and the Association. Through fifty years of hard work and dedication, these members have provided a foundation upon which their colleagues will continue to build, both in and outside the classroom.
Harvey Alpert
Hofstra University
Laird C. Brodie
Portland State University
Melvin Cohn
University of California, San Diego
Charles Edwards
New York
Milton Fingerman
Tulane University
Marc R. Gartenberg
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
Glenn H. Hamor
University of Southern California
Martin M. Herman
Wayne State University
Harry H. Hilton
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alice F. Iverson
North Park University
Robert O. McWilliams
Eastern Michigan University
John S. Morris
Union College
Robert T. Morrison
New York University
Richard E. Norberg
Washington University
William C. Nutting
University of Utah
W. M. Carr Payne, Jr.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Daniel H. Pollitt
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Allan H. Roush
Montana State University-Bozeman
William H. Russell
Geneva College
John R. Schmidhauser
University of Southern California
Victor J. Stone
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Alfred D. Sumberg
Maryland
Allen W. Trelease
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Lise Wallach
Duke University
James Wheatley
Ontario, Canada
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