2018 AAUP Updates

Today the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has released a letter sent to the Israeli government about the interrogation, subsequent expulsion, and apparent banning from Israel of Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke in April. 

Today the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure released a statement calling on public universities to stop requiring speakers and others to pledge that they do not now, nor will they in the future, endorse the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS).

The AAUP joined with the American Council on Education and thirty-five other higher education associations in filing an amicus brief in federal court this week opposing a challenge to race-based admissions at Harvard University. We argue that “a diverse student body is essential to educational objectives of colleges and universities, and that each institution should be able to exercise its academic judgment to determine within broad limits the diversity that will advance its own particular mission.”

The AAUP has appointed a committee to formally investigate three cases at St. Edward University in Austin,Texas. The cases involve the dismissal of two long-serving tenured associate professors without affording them academic due process, and the nonrenewal of a tenure-track assistant professor without providing adequate notice and an appropriate appeal procedure.

The Oregon Employment Relations Board officially certified United Academics of Oregon State University Wednesday, capping a three-year organizing effort by hundreds of teaching and research faculty in a variety of jobs and academic disciplines.

Today, a narrow majority of US Supreme Court justices issued a long awaited decision in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, a case advanced by wealthy special interests. Although this decision was not unexpected, we are disappointed by the opinion of the majority. At issue was whether non-union members, who share in the wages, benefits, and protections that have been negotiated into a collectively bargained contract, may be required to pay their fair share for the cost. The court ruled that they may not. Make no mistake, our fight as AAUP members to have a positive impact on our colleges and universities, to strengthen public higher education, and to protect academic freedom is not over.

We are awaiting a Supreme Court decision that will likely have a profound effect on the way that most unions in the public sector operate, and it will have a profound effect on the AAUP. The good news is that we do not have to stand by and watch our profession and with it higher education, as a public good, be destroyed by super-rich corporate interests and extreme right wing forces. How do we fight back? With unions.

On Saturday, June 16, the delegates at the 104th annual meeting of the AAUP voted to add the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to the list of censured administrations. Two delegates from the Nebraska conference spoke at the meeting in favor of censure. Here are their remarks, reprinted with permission.