Due to concerns about COVID-19, the AAUP office has transitioned to telework. Please contact staff by email.
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.
At a time when the country is confronting deep-rooted racial inequity, legislators in a number of states have moved to restrict teaching about oppression, race, and gender.
We strongly oppose these efforts to stifle education about racism and American history in schools, colleges, and universities. Along with more than seventy other organizations who have signed on to a statement authored by the AAUP, PEN America, the American Historical Association, and the Association of American Colleges & Universities, we affirm that Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today.
In testimony given at a hearing about improving enforcement of Title IX, the AAUP emphasized four elements that are essential to achieving gender equity in institutions of higher education: free speech and academic freedom, due process, faculty governance, and analysis of sources of inequality.
Matthew Finkin remembers Marty Lapidus, who died on May 27 at the age of eighty.
The saga of Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornell West highlight the importance of tenure in academic freedom and the fight for racial justice and equity in higher education.
The AAUP's Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession shows university faculty pay dropped nationwide last year for the first time since the great recession.
“This is more evidence that those without tenure, or at least opportunity for tenure, their livelihood is at risk,” said Glenn Colby, senior researcher with the AAUP.
"Black people make up 13.4% of the US population but accounted for less than 6% of faculty at public and private nonprofit four-year colleges in the USA in 2018, according to federal data analyzed by the AAUP."
The university's work to get accredited "could be undone after a scathing report by the American Association of University Professors, which put NU on its sanctioned list for a “trinity of egregious violations of widely accepted governance standards.” . . . .“These actions should trigger an investigation by WASC,” said Adrianna Kezar, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. “The Board [of Trustees] needs to take seriously AAUP sanctioning and possible implications for their accreditation.”
“By whatever measure one chooses,” the American Association of University Professors said in an assessment of the topic earlier this year, “campus police have not made campuses safer”.
“There is no question that many colleges and universities are in financial distress, and many more will face daunting challenges in the next decade,” the report says. “The question is whether robust shared governance will survive those challenges. For that to happen, governing boards, administrations and faculties must make a conscious, concerted, and sustained effort to ensure that all parties are conversant with, and cultivate respect for, the norms of shared governance.”
The AAUP will hold an online Summer Institute with webinars and workshops every Tuesday and Thursday between July 6 and July 29, free to members. Registration is now open and now is the time to organize for a better future for our students, the profession, and our communities.
A meeting of the AAUP's national Council.
Due to concerns about COVID-19, the AAUP office has transitioned to telework until further notice. The best way to reach staff members is to write to the appropriate email address for the staff member or department you need to contact. Please consult the AAUP staff page for guidance.
Did you know that the AAUP has an online career center to help colleges and universities connect with qualified applicants?
