Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure

2011 report finding violations of academic freedom in two cases at Louisiana’s flagship public institution, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, that are different in the administrative officers involved and in the matters under dispute but alike in putting core issues of aca demic freedom to the test. The first case, affecting a nontenured associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in his seventeenth year of full-time service on the faculty, tested the rela tionship between freedom of research and publication and freedom of extramural utterance in a...

Report dealing with due process, tenure, sexual harassment, and financial exigency in 2009 at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black university. The report concerns the actions taken by the administration to suspend and then dismiss four professors, two with tenure, without having demonstrated cause for its actions in hearings before faculty peers. The report also deals with the administration's actions to terminate the appoint ments of three other professors without advance notice, without affording academic due process, and in two cases without the protections of due process that...

The report of the investigating committee concerns the actions taken by the administration of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, after a declaration of financial exigency at that institution by the University of Texas Board of Regents, to terminate the appointments of more than 120 faculty members, approximately one-third of them tenured. The actions followed a suspension of operations at the medical branch and its affected hospital as a result of the devastation inflicted on September 13, 2008, by Hurricane Ike. Faculty members received between six and nine months of notice...

Report discussing the declaration of an enrollment emergency by the administration of Clark Atlanta University and its subsequent action to terminate the appointments of approximately one-fourth of the total faculty, with no notice and four weeks of unconditional severance salary.

Report examining the potential impact on academic governance of the Supreme Court Garcetti v. Ceballos decision. It recommends actions to be taken in both public and private colleges and universities to preserve academic freedom in governance even in the face of judicial hostility or indifference.

A report discussing academic boycotts and relevant AAUP policies, and making recommendations.

Report concerning the suspension and subsequent dismissal of a faculty member by the administration of Stillman College on grounds of “malicious gossip or public verbal abuse" without due process.

The report of the investigating committee concerns the action taken by the administration of Cedarville University to dismiss a professor in the Department of Biblical Education from his tenured faculty position with thirty days' notice, without first demonstrated cause for its action in an adjudicative hearing before faculty peers.

Report concerning action taken by the administration of Olivet Nazarene University to remove a tenured professor from his usual teaching responsibilities and to prohibit the use of his book in all university courses. The president took this action after a controversy arose within the university’s denominational constituency over the professor’s views on evolution.

Report regarding North Idaho College policies, part-time instructors lack basic protections of academic due process, therefore, making them vulnerable.