Statement calling for shared responsibility among the different components of institutional government and its specification of areas of primary responsibility for governing boards, administrations, and faculties, and remains the Association's central policy document relating to academic governance.
A report arguing that requiring faculty members to sign confidentiality agreements as a requirement to serve on university committees is in most cases inconsistent with widely accepted standards of shared governance and with the concept of serving as a representative.
This statement argues that requiring faculty members to sign confidentiality agreements as a requirement to serve on university committees is in most cases inconsistent with widely accepted standards of shared governance and with the concept of serving as a representative.
As part of this year’s report we include a case study of compensation discussions on one specific campus. Like all feature articles in Academe, this case study represents the views of the authors and not necessarily the formal policies of the AAUP. It is presented here not to serve as a model but to stimulate discussion around shared governance in faculty compensation. We had initially commissioned a second case study, but it was not available at press time.
To regard teachers—in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university—as the priests of our democracy is not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens. —Justice Felix Frankfurter, Wieman v. Updegraff
Widespread concerns about decreased collegiality along with perceptions of increased incivility and bullying have led many institutions of higher education to consider how to balance the legitimate enforcement of respectful and productive workplace conditions with adequate protections for academic freedom and individual rights to expression. Some legal analysts put this issue at the forefront of policy discussion in higher education and note that collegiality is increasingly a factor in important employment decisions.
In 2002, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation allowing faculty at four-year state universities to unionize. The administration at my university, Western Washington University, took a dim view of the idea of a unionized faculty and launched an energetic, if fairly bumbling, campaign to convince faculty not to vote for the union. In one of their messages, administrators ominously suggested that by unionizing we would be moving from an academic and collegial shared governance model to a corporate and confrontational labor-management model.
