2012 AAUP Updates

On May 7, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education voted down contracts for faculty and graduate assistants at the University of Rhode Island. Agreements on the contracts were reached nearly two months ago by negotiators for the board and the University of Rhode Island faculty union and graduate student union, both chapters of the AAUP. The contracts were the result of over eight months of difficult negotiations, in which both sides made concessions. The board's about face came after Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee publicly criticized the financial aspects of the contract, 3 percent raises each year for three years, as being too generous.

Members of the California Faculty Association, an AAUP affiliate, overwhelmingly approved unprecedented system-wide strikes. The vote came after two years of unsuccessful bargaining with the California State University administration, where administrators are pushing for draconian cuts to the instructional budget. Ninety-five percent of members voted to authorize CSU’s instructional faculty, librarians, counselors, and coaches to initiate rolling walkouts if the administration continues to demand concessions.

Wright State University professor Rudy Fichtenbaum has been elected president of the AAUP. Fichtenbaum, a long time AAUP leader and faculty unionist, will take office in June. Below, he is pictured at the AAUP Governance Conference. 

Should Michigan residents be concerned that the state’s legislators will enact legislation denying public university students their academic freedom? AAUP president Cary Nelson issued this statement on April 16, 2012.

After administrators at the University of Illinois at Chicago challenged a single union for tenure-track and contingent faculty and refused to voluntarily recognize two separate unions, faculty today filed a new set of a membership cards with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board for two separate bargaining units.

Faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago are calling on the administration to voluntarily recognize two separate bargaining units, one of tenure-track and one of non-tenure-track faculty, after a court ruled Thursday that a joint bargaining unit was inconsistent with state law. The UIC United Faculty is affiliated with the AFT-IFT and the AAUP.

Faculty and students at the University of Northern Iowa are protesting academic cuts to programs and departments that have been proposed by the institution's administration. The cuts would result in layoffs, including layoffs of tenured faculty.

We are saddened to mark the passing of Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, who died of complications from colon cancer on Tuesday, March 6. Rep. Payne was a champion of higher education, and in particular worked hard to protect and expand financial aid programs for students. Because of his work on behalf of higher education, the AAUP presented him with the 2010 Henry Yost award. At the time, we wrote in Academe:

On behalf of more than 63,000 collectively organized instructional and research employees at flagship and research university systems across the country, thirteen higher education leaders have written a letter supporting the campaign for collective bargaining at the University of Oregon. The campaign is working to ensure collective bargaining rights for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, research assistants and associates, and post-doctoral scholars at the university.

In response to reports that the University of Northern Iowa administration, without consulting with the faculty, has proposed eliminating academic programs and terminating faculty appointments in areas such as physics, geography, religion, philosophy, and the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, the AAUP today sent a letter urging the administration to follow normative standards of academic governance.

The Association is planning to redesign our website this year. The redesigned site will reflect our anticipated restructuring into three related entities (a professional organization, a union, and a foundation). And, we hope, it will make our many resources easier to find and use!

The AAUP opposes the recent move to ban certain books from the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tuscon, Arizona. Read the joint statement and the list of signatories here.

In a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, the AAUP thanked him for his concern about the rapidly rising cost of higher education, but corrected remarks he made Friday that suggested that faculty salaries are a significant driver of rising cost.

On Thursday, January 12, responding to complaints received from faculty leaders at the City University of New York, the AAUP sent a letter (.pdf) to the CUNY chancellor and board chair setting forth the Association’s concerns relating to the adoption by the administration and governing board of the “Pathways to Degree Completion” initiative.