Larry G. Gerber

From the Editor: Governance in a Time of Financial Crisis

Calls to resist the corporatization of higher education and for faculty control over educational issues go back at least to Thorstein Veblen’s publication of The Higher Learning in America in 1918. However, as many of the articles in this issue demonstrate, the current economic crisis has greatly intensified threats to the practice of shared governance.

College and University Governance

Most discussions of the AAUP’s origins and subsequent history focus on the Association’s role in defending principles of academic freedom and tenure. From shortly after its beginning a century ago, however, the AAUP has also played a crucial role in advancing the principle that faculty members, by virtue of their professional expertise in scholarship and teaching, ought to be centrally involved in college and university governance.

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