The AAUP office reopened on September 7, 2021. Contact information for all staff, including those working remotely or on a hybrid schedule, is available here.
“The Build Back Better Act represents a historic and long-overdue investment in higher education—as well as a meaningful down payment on the additional changes needed to aid our colleges and universities, and the people who make them run. Increased Pell Grant funding, a new college retention and completion fund, and tuition subsidies at minority-serving institutions are important initiatives that will help students at a wide range of institutions, and go beyond the free community college funding that is the signature program of this bill."
“The unmistakable aim of such efforts is to impose thought control on American education and thereby on the American people," the brief states.
The AAUP calls on campus administrations to do everything possible to ensure the highest level of health and safety, and to follow the guidance of public health experts to use every available tool to protect students, faculty, staff, and neighboring communities from further spread of COVID this fall.
The AAUP led a coalition letter, signed by national unions with locals and chapters on college campuses, asking Congress to support higher ed workers in the American Families Plan. The letter argued that the proposed free community college plan should be expanded to better protect faculty and staff, ensure high-quality instruction for students at any institution, and promote shared governance.
The AAUP condemns in the strongest possible terms the recent actions to ban, limit, or distort the teaching of history and related academic subjects.
The AAUP released the second report on data collected from the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, the first national survey on shared governance since 2001. Focusing on faculty roles in decision making areas at 585 randomly-sampled four-year institutions of higher education, the report notes that the survey presents a mixed picture of the current state of shared governance.
Since censure was imposed on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2018, the AAUP has worked with the administration and faculty to remove it. Unfortunately, a proposed regents’ resolution that would prohibit “any imposition of critical race theory in [the] curriculum” of the institutions in the state university system puts the censure removal efforts in jeopardy. The AAUP has suspended a planned virtual site visit to the university pending the regents’ August vote on this resolution.
The AAUP's Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2020–21, outlines how years of unstable funding, combined with the impacts of the COVID‑19 pandemic, have created an existential threat to shared governance and academic freedom in higher education that severely weakens our nation’s ability to effectively educate our communities.
As part of their efforts to roll back harmful Trump-era regulations, the US Department of Education announced a public comment period on a wide range of student lending and educational quality topics. The AAUP is calling for reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, greater representation of faculty on rulemaking committees, and a quick decision on broad-based student loan cancellation.
Some professors are objecting to the lack of public health protections, with protests, petitions, and resignations.
AAUP and UCW rallied Tuesday before the chancellor's flagship address. Over 850 people have signed a petition demanding better campus COVID-19 safety.
The hard fought contract agreement proposes a lump sum salary increase in the deal's first year and an additional 4.25% increase in base pay over the final two years of the contract.
Some professors feel stripped of their ability to determine what’s best for their students and themselves.
Beginning Monday, Georgia faculty from at least 16 colleges will begin week-long demonstrations in hopes of pressuring administrators to institute mask and/or vaccine mandates.
As the Georgia conference of the AAUP plans a week of protests demanding a mask mandate and more options for teaching students in quarantine, the University System of Georgia considers disciplinary action, up to suspension, for professors who take COVID-19 mitigation into their own hands.
"The decision-makers at the University of Oklahoma want to have it both ways. They want to appear to be doing the right thing when it comes to scientifically-backed COVID-19 mitigation strategies. But they also appear to want to please certain donors, politicians, parents and others who want an "in-class experience" without 100% indoor masking and COVID-19 vaccination requirements as is strongly recommended by the CDC."
Matthew Boedy, president of AAUP Georgia, said that seeing his mostly unmasked class at the University of North Georgia was “an emotional hellscape.” Some instructors are finding the return to the classroom a nerve-racking experience. A few have quit — one in the middle of class.
“We would like to thank all our members for the amazing outpouring of solidarity and support."
Columbus State University's AAUP chapter will hold a demonstration Friday protesting what they call unsafe working and learning conditions after faculty and staff petitioned the University System of Georgia asking for more COVID-19 protocols.
Join us for a training covering the basics of using a digital communication tool like Action Network to run email campaigns, letter campaigns, and petitions.
Academic freedom is central to the ability of faculty, librarians, and graduate employees to fully engage in their work and to fulfill the public mission of the university. For unionized AAUP chapters, putting academic freedom protections in your contract is the best way to ensure that they are legally enforceable. Using a newly issued AAUP guidebook, we’ll offer guidelines and examples for strengthening academic freedom and related provisions in collective bargaining agreements. This webinar is intended for members of AAUP collective bargaining chapters and affiliates.
In this training, we’ll offer a broad overview of the AAUP’s federal-level government relations work and how chapters and conferences can get involved. Many have already supported our campaign for a New Deal for higher ed—but what is our long-term vision for our association’s access and influence in the halls of power?
This training is designed for chapter and conference leaders and field staff interested in learning about a primary role of AAUP chapters: working for the incorporation of AAUP standards on academic freedom, tenure, and governance into the institution’s faculty handbook. Which of these standards should a chapter focus on and how are they best understood?
In this training for chapter and conference leaders, we’ll give an overview of engaging with campus community/members via Facebook and Twitter, and go over the pros/cons of public pages vs. private groups. We’ll delve into storytelling techniques and creating compelling messages for social media.
Did you know that the AAUP has an online career center to help colleges and universities connect with qualified applicants?
