Due to concerns about COVID-19, the AAUP office has transitioned to telework. Please contact staff by email.
Matthew Finkin remembers Marty Lapidus, who died on May 27 at the age of eighty.
The governing Council of the AAUP voted to add Canisius College (NY), Keuka College (NY), Marian University (WI), Medaille College (NY), National University (CA), and Wittenberg University (OH) to the AAUP’s list of sanctioned institutions. The Council also voted to remove Bastyr University from the AAUP’s list of censured administrations.
A new AAUP report on data from the first national survey about shared governance in two decades focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on governance. Analyzing the results of a questionnaire completed by faculty governance leaders, it documents both the ways in which academic governance has been under severe pressure during the pandemic and an increase in faculty influence at some institutions.
At a time when bills seeking to suppress teaching about race, oppression, and gender are proliferating in the states, the unrebutted assumption must be that the board was motivated by concerns about Hannah-Jones's work on the New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning "1619 Project" and that its intervention was therefore not only inappropriate but racist and blatantly political, linked to a wider attack on teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.
Many institutions faced dire challenges in the 2020–21 academic year; for some, the pandemic exacerbated long-festering conditions. We found that, at other institutions, governing boards and administrations opportunistically exploited the pandemic, using it as an excuse to put aside established academic governance processes and unilaterally close programs and lay off faculty members
The AAUP is launching investigations into the dismissals of one faculty member at Linfield University and two faculty members at Collin College. In all cases, the faculty members were dismissed without due process and for reasons that appear to have violated their academic freedom.
After a strike lasting more than a week, faculty in the Oregon Tech AAUP chapter reached a tentative agreement with the administration early this morning.
The revelation that the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania have been keeping and using human remains recovered from the 1985 police bombing of the Black liberation group MOVE is deeply troubling. We call on faculty and academic staff in disciplines that involve using human remains in research and teaching to work with their institutions and disciplinary associations to ensure that they are following disciplinary standards, institutional regulations, and current law.
“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.”
“We have a lot more work to do with fewer faculty,” said Evelyn Stiller, a professor of computer science and the president of the AAUP chapter at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.
AAUP member Isaac Kamola has tracked more than 1,570 stories posted on Campus Reform since 2020 and surveyed the 338 individuals they targeted, many of whose official profiles and contact details were linked to in stories about them. The survey, the results of which will be published by the AAUP’s Academe magazine, found that at least 40 percent of respondents received “threats of harm” following a Campus Reform article.
Average faculty pay fell by 0.4 percent this year, adjusting for inflation, the first such decrease since 2011-12, according to preliminary data from the American Association of University Professors’ annual Faculty Compensation Survey.
This top-line figure doesn’t tell the full story of how academic salaries have fared during COVID-19. Just as the pandemic has had an outsize effect on certain parts of society and the economy, it’s affected faculty compensation at certain kinds of institutions, at certain ranks, more than others.
This is a national imperative, requiring New Deal-level funding and focus, write Irene Mulvey and Randi Weingarten.
How does making all workers contingent and expendable drive “systemic change that dismantles the status quo”? Why must so many college and university administrators insist that the only way to be fair is for everyone to expect less?
AAUP president Irene Mulvey says she gets that administrators want flexibility and nimbleness for hiring, “but it’s tenured faculty with academic freedom that make a great institution.”
On behalf of AAUP chapters in Iowa, where a proposed bill would abolish tenure at public universities, Lois Cox and Katherine Tachau write, "Tenure is indispensable to academic freedom. It allows professors the independence to do the best work they are capable of doing without fear that they will be fired for their opinions or conclusions."
The new AAUP chapter at Penn plans to "fight for more faculty involvement, better working conditions for all employees — including equitable pay for all ranks and a redress of inequities in salary and promotion for women and faculty of color — and “to advocate for the most vulnerable members of our community.”
The AAUP will hold its shared governance conference online from June 14 through June 18, 2021.
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.
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?
