2019 AAUP In the News

All future private gift agreements signed by George Mason University officials will now be treated as public records subject to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. GMU’s AAUP chapter was part of a six-person gift acceptance policy implementation task force that provided guidance to administrators as they revised the policy that outlines the university’s processes regarding private philanthropy.

A tenure-track faculty member from the University of Mississippi tweeted about national politics. His tenure suddenly seemed at risk. AAUP reminded the school's governing board that denying tenure for political speech violates academic freedom. He was granted tenure. 

AAUP investigation finds Vermont Law School violated shared governance norms when it suddenly stripped tenure from most of its faculty.

The Wright State Chapter of the AAUP has ratified a contract agreement reached earlier this year with the school’s administration. The agreement came after a 20-day strike by members of the union ended in early February when a tentative deal was reached.

The University of Illinois at Chicago administration has announced a tentative contract agreement with UIC United Faculty, which represents about 1,200 teachers at the Near West Side campus. Faculty union members have been working without a contract since August and have been in negotiations with the administration since last summer.

A strike has been averted at New Jersey’s largest public university after Rutgers AAUP-AFT faculty union, which had been working without a contract for nearly a year. The proposed four-year contract includes pay hikes for faculty members, pay equity measures for female and minority instructors, and better job security for some non-tenured professors.

If the Rutgers University faculty union AAUP-AFT decides to call a strike after marathon bargaining sessions with the university for a new contract, union members are ready: Official picket signs have been printed, picket line captains trained, and students prepared to provide support.

Our annual faculty-compensation survey provides a snapshot of the earning power of full-time and part-time faculty members. The long and short of it: Pay raises were modest, faculty buying power has eroded, and many different factors are rolled into faculty pay. But the data, from nearly 1,000 two- and four-year colleges, also tell us three things about the academic workplace.

A new "free speech" law in Iowa will require public universities and community colleges to uphold the "fullest degree of intellectual freedom and free expression." Katherine Tachau, Iowa AAUP president, said freedom of expression is at the heart of universities. It's not clear how the law will change their campus, but her organization worries about "undesirable unintended consequences."

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.”