2024 AAUP Updates

03.15.2024 | Good Decision for Tenure Rights in Tufts Med School Case

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has issued an important decision recognizing academic freedom and economic security as “important norms in the academic community.”

After noting that contractual language at issue in the case was taken word-for-word from the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the court echoed crucial points made in the AAUP’s amicus brief, explaining in particular that “academic freedom is essential to the common good” and that the purpose of tenure is to safeguard academic freedom and ensure the economic security of faculty members.

 

03.08.2024 | New Amicus Brief Supports Right of Tenure at Canisius College

This week, the AAUP filed an amicus brief in an important legal case concerning the ability of a college to terminate tenured faculty appointments due to the institution’s purported financial difficulties. The plaintiffs were tenured professors at Canisius College prior to their termination.

02.29.2024 | AAUP Files Two New Amicus Briefs Supporting Professorial Speech

This week, the AAUP filed amicus briefs in two important legal cases involving the right of faculty members to teach and to speak publicly about curriculum standards and shared governance. Our briefs are a key component of our work to defend higher education for the common good, and they aim to shape the law to support academic freedom, which continues to face an unprecedented barrage of attacks. The AAUP hopes that these amicus briefs will spur the courts to issue decisions that will be favorable to the individual professors involved and that will protect the rights of faculty more broadly in the years to come.

02.26.2024 | AAUP Votes to Sanction New College of Florida and Spartanburg Community College

The AAUP’s governing Council voted to add New College of Florida and Spartanburg Community College to the Association’s list of institutions sanctioned for substantial noncompliance with widely accepted standards of academic government.

02.14.2024 | AAUP Signs Labor Movement Call for Ceasefire

We, along with other members of the American labor movement, mourn the loss of life in Israel and Palestine. We express our solidarity with all workers and our common desire for peace in Palestine and Israel, and we call on President Joe Biden and Congress to push for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege of Gaza. Read the whole statement.

02.14.2024 | AAUP Receives Mellon Grant for Academic Freedom Center

The AAUP has received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish a Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, with the aim of examining and confronting the recent surge of political and ideological attacks on American higher education.

02.08.2024 | The Time Is Now to Resist Political Interference

The AAUP released a statement today commenting on the recent US House Committee on Education and the Workforce demand for documents and information from the University of Pennsylvania on attempts to curb antisemitism. The statement calls on administrators, faculties, trustees, and all who care about higher education as a public good in a democracy to resist political interference and reaffirm their commitments to academic freedom, freedom of expression, shared governance, and institutional autonomy.

02.01.2024 | New Campus Free Speech FAQ

New guidance is out from the AAUP and AFT to help our members navigate campus free speech and academic freedom in politically charged contexts.

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