2019 AAUP In the News

In a joint statement, higher education groups including the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges & Universities called the order “a dangerous solution to a largely nonexistent problem” that is “more likely to stifle than encourage free expression and diversity of opinion.”

Rutgers AAUP-AFT, the bargaining unit representing full-time faculty and graduate employees at Rutgers University has its members’ blessing to call a strike if contract negotiations aren’t successful. Eighty-eight percent of its members voted to authorize union leaders to call a strike.

Many organizations, including the AAUP, are opposing President Trump's plan to issue an executive order to cut off federal research dollars to institutions determined not to be supporting free speech.

Purdue University Global confirmed it has eliminated forced arbitration agreements for students, scoring a major win for the Indiana chapters of the AAUP, which advocated against clauses. 

Collective bargaining has emerged as a path to improving working conditions for adjunct faculty. Higher ed administrators shouldn't look at this as a threat to their industry--the real threat is a workforce that is seen as "disposable." 

AAUP report says Nunez Community College fired a longtime professor of English when he asked too many questions about how it would meet reaccreditation requirements on assessment.

AAUP sent a letter to Augsburg University after it suspended professor Phillip Adamo because he quoted a passage by James Baldwin which contained the N-word.

Wright State University administration filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the State Employment Relations Board, asking it to declare the faculty strike unauthorized. But the SERB ruled against university’s complaint, allowing the faculty strike to continue.

On the fourth day of a faculty strike at Wright State University, Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown released a statement in support of striking faculty. "I'm proud of the faculty and students demanding better benefits for those who've helped make it [Wright State] the premier institution it is today," said Brown. Brown went on to say he supports the rights of workers to band together and "fight for better working conditions."

Great coverage of AAUP-WSU strike. Explains: "Years of overspending, combined with declining donations and enrollment, caused Wright State’s financial problems to snowball." It shouldn't be on faculty to pay for mistakes.

After controversies involving two professors, Fresno State University is considering creating a set of principles that “exemplify what we can and should be.” But Henry Reichman, chair of the committee on academic freedom and tenure, said that documents such as Fresno State’s are at best "anodyne" and quickly forgotten but at worst “used to justify censorship and conformity.”