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Academic Freedom

On Trigger Warnings

A current threat to academic freedom in the classroom comes from a demand that teachers provide warnings in advance if assigned material contains anything that might trigger difficult emotional responses for students.

A Century of Change

Chief among the Association’s concerns since 1915 has been the protection of academic freedom. This essay offers thoughts on how things have been going and where they may be headed with that critical task. I have been associated with the AAUP for about a third of its history as, at various times, a staff member and volunteer.

Denial of Entry to Professor Troubling

The administration of NYU has maintained that its Abu Dhabi campus will observe the AAUP’s principles on academic freedom and that all faculty and students will be free to enter and leave the country without undue restriction. Professor Ross’s experience raises considerable doubt about these claims.

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Victory for Academic Freedom at University of Arizona

A recent court decision from Arizona affirms the AAUP’s continuing support for the academic freedom rights of faculty members engaged in research by contesting intrusive public records requests.

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Academic Freedom and Tenure: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, A Supplementary Report on a Censured Administration

This supplementary report raises questions about the dismissal of professor Teresa Buchanan from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, which has been on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations since 2012. Professor Buchanan, a specialist in early childhood education with an unblemished eighteen-year performance record, was being evaluated for promotion to full professor when a district school superintendent and an LSU student filed complaints against her for occasional use of profanity and bawdy language. Her dean immediately suspended her from teaching, and eventually, despite a faculty hearing committee's unanimous recommendation against dismissal, the LSU board of supervisors accepted the administration's recommendation that she be dismissed. The faculty senate at LSU also condemned the administration's actions, and, represented by attorneys from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Professor Buchanan has filed a lawsuit against the university, for which the AAUP Foundation has provided financial assistance.

New Report Raises Concerns about LSU Firing

This report questions hasty actions by the administration, procedures followed, and low tolerance for profanity at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. This supplementary report on a censured administration is one of only seven such reports issued in the AAUP’s century of existence.

A Journalist's View of the Assault on Public Education

As the united voice of the scholars and teachers at our nation’s colleges and universities, the AAUP has never been more needed than it is today and more crucial to the fierce debate raging across the land, from the poorest public school districts to the most elite private universities, over what American education will look like in the twenty-first century and what role the faculty, the workforce of the education industry, will play.

Palestinian Universities and Everyday Life under Occupation

On my last night in the old city of Jerusalem, I enter through the Flower’s Gate and walk through a busy market, past boys chasing each other on narrow streets, clusters of old men visiting in shop doorways, women leaning out of upper windows. The fading afternoon light amplifies the social relations of a neighborhood bound by intimate conversation and cheerful laughter. Just before I reach the Muslim cemetery, however, teenagers loitering a block away from the Lion’s Gate fling an empty glass bottle in front of a car backing out of a narrow driveway.

Why Academic Politics Are So Vicious

Twenty years have passed since I taught my first day of classes as a beginning assistant professor at Middle Tennessee State University. To be honest, these days I often find myself bored as well as exhausted. But I do not seek a life elsewhere. It is the fact that I can spread ideas that keeps me faithful to what I do.

AAUP Welcomes Jennifer Ruth as Editor of Journal of Academic Freedom

Henry Reichman, AAUP first vice-president and chair of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, said “Jennifer Ruth's wide-ranging interests in topics as diverse as Victorian literature and higher education in China, her fervent commitment to academic freedom and shared governance, and her ambitious, innovative, and courageous efforts to address the profound implications of universities' increasing reliance on non-tenure-track faculty, make her an ideal candidate to edit the Journal of Academic Freedom."

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