2024 AAUP Updates

The AAUP released today a new research report, Policies on Academic Freedom, Dismissal for Cause, Financial Exigency, and Program Discontinuance, that examines the prevalence of AAUP-supported policies in faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at four-year institutions that have a tenure system. 

The AAUP joined over seventy other higher education organizations yesterday in submitting an amicus brief, prepared by the American Council on Education (ACE), in support of a legal challenge filed by Harvard University and MIT against the US Department of Homeland Security in the US District Court in Massachusetts to prevent DHS’s July 6 directive, which rescinds a prior COVID-19 exemption for international students participating in online education, from taking effect.

The AAUP joins many other higher education organizations and colleagues in the labor movement in calling on the Trump administration to allow all international students to obtain or retain visas to continue their education at US institutions, regardless of whether they participate remotely, in person, or through a hybrid model and regardless of whether they are studying inside or outside the United States, during this unprecedented global health crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic must not become the occasion for administrations or governing boards to jettison normative principles of academic governance.

We call on our chapters, our members, and campus administrations to stand firm in their support of members of the campus community who speak out in the name of anti-racism and racial justice.

The governing Council of the AAUP voted to add Pacific Lutheran University to the AAUP’s list of censured administrations. The Council also voted to remove Clarkson College of Nebraska. Since 1938 the AAUP has censured administrations of higher education institutions for failing to observe generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure.

AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum has issued a statement on the protests in response to the murder of George Floyd.

The AAUP's Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession provides a snapshot of faculty compensation for the 2019–20 academic year, as the country was on the brink of what may be the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.