2024 AAUP In the News

03.14.2024 | Low Grade? Arizona Bill Would Let Students Allege "Political Bias"

The bill “seems to be deeply problematic; it assigns to the Board of Regents powers that it really should have delegated to faculty,” said Mark Criley, a senior program officer for the American Association of University Professors’ Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance. A faculty member’s right to assign the grades he or she believes a student deserves is considered a pillar of academic freedom.

03.01.2024 | A Proposal to Tie Tenure to Intellectual Diversity Nears Approval in Indiana

"It is a blank check to fire any faculty member for any reason, at any time, regardless of tenure. I think people find that hard to believe, because it is so shocking and so radical and so un-American, but that is what the text says.”

02.26.2024 | Defending Academic Freedom on Campus

Since 1915 and urgently since Oct. 7, the A.A.U.P. has advocated a robust concept of academic freedom. We have urged administrators to provide an environment in which no voices are silenced, no ideas are suppressed, and the most deeply held beliefs are subject to challenge.

02.23.2024 | About 75% of CSU Pueblo faculty experience economic stress, survey finds

Jonathan Rees, president of CSU Pueblo's AAUP chapter, said his hope is that the survey convinces the administration to move faculty economic concerns way up the priority list. "If we explain how bad the problem is, then maybe we won't be the last thing they worry about when they are putting together next year's budget."

02.21.2024 | Indiana Bill Threatens Faculty Members Who Don’t Provide ‘Intellectual Diversity’

“These measures would severely constrain academic freedom,” says a joint statement by the Purdue at West Lafayette and Indiana University at Bloomington chapters of the AAUP. “The security imparted by tenure is the fundamental protection of academic freedom; its loss would make university positions in Indiana undesirable. Recruiting and retaining top faculty, who will always have alternatives, will no longer be possible.”

02.01.2024 | The Florida GOP’s removal of this core college course is absurd

This strike at sociology is very on-brand for the Florida GOP. We know about DeSantis’ ongoing crusade to commandeer all leadership positions at New College of Florida. Elsewhere, a proverbial Florida Man (with the checkered past and absence of relevant credentials that such an identity entails) has been installed as the leader of South Florida State College. The American Association of University Professors chronicled this and other outrageous Sunshine State power grabs in a report so full of absurd details that it reads like a campus novel.

02.01.2024 | U.S. colleges are overusing — and underpaying — adjunct professors

There is no more important place for colleges to spend their money than hiring the best instructors they can find and providing fair pay, benefits and reasonable working conditions.

01.29.2024 | At Penn, Tensions May Only Be Growing After Magill’s Resignation

“This is an anti-democratic attack unfolding, not just at Penn, but all across the country, including at public universities in Florida, in Texas, Ohio and beyond,” said Offner, the president of the university’s chapter of the AAUP, a professional faculty organization.

Penn, she said, had become “ground zero of a coordinated national assault on higher education, an assault organized by billionaires, lobbying organizations and politicians who would like to control what can be studied and taught in the United States.”

01.28.2024 | At colleges, unions fight for equity as well as pay

what makes the labor movement in higher ed different from the larger labor movement is that in addition to bread-and-butter issues, there’s always demands for academic freedom and often racial justice, equity issues, mental health issues, social justice issues,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, told The Hill.

 

01.23.2024 | 'Let us teach': Over 100 Penn affiliates gather in AAUP-led protest for academic freedom

“Universities don’t exist to serve private interests. They are not tools for the business interests or political agendas of donors and trustees." - AAUP Penn president Amy Offner

01.13.2024 | “Really personal”: Billionaire targets MIT after Harvard plagiarism crusade backfires on his wife

"Given how quickly the focus of the people claiming to be concerned about antisemitism on our campuses shifted to plagerism, it certainly appears that the focus was never really about antisemitism and protecting students," Irene Mulvey, the president of the AAUP told Salon. "It's part of a long-running, well-funded effort to create a false narrative for the public that higher education is broken."

01.07.2024 | 'Exhausted', 'confused,' 'unprecedented': Texas professors, students reflect on DEI ban

“It is creating a chilling effect on people of color and queer students and our allies who want to come to places like UT-Austin. Why would you come to an institution that makes you hide parts of yourself or does not give full dignity to all parts of yourself?”

The confusion and despair on campus is profound, said Karma Chavez, a UT Mexican American and Latina/o Studies professor and an executive committee member of the UT chapter of the AAUP.

01.07.2024 | “The issue was never plagiarism”: Right-wingers “signaled their intentions” before Harvard scandal

This plagiarism charge was never about integrity. “If the plagiarism accusations didn't stick, they would’ve dropped them and moved on to something else,” Irene Mulvey, President of the AAUP, told Salon.

There's something illegitimate about these accusations, mainly because of the way they were entered into the “public sphere,” she added. The unfairness of what happened to Gay is visible for everyone to see, but faculty of color have always navigated extra challenges in academia.