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Groups Endorse Academic Freedom Statement
By Gwendolyn Bradley
With the addition this year of more than a dozen new endorsers of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, some 205 groups have now endorsed the statement. Formulated by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (then called the Association of American Colleges), the statement defines the vital importance of academic freedom in American higher education and explains the role of tenure in protecting it. The statement’s principles are widely accepted among academic institutions.
“We are extremely pleased by this development, especially given the diversity of the organizations—in the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences—that have added their endorsement,” says Robert Kreiser, a staff member in the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance and the editor of AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, in which the 1940 Statement and other key AAUP policy documents and reports are published. The tenth edition of the volume, also known as the Redbook, is due out this fall. “At a time when American higher education is experiencing new and growing threats to academic freedom and tenure,” states Kreiser, “we are heartened by the commitment to fundamental principles displayed by these new endorsements.”
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