2017 AAUP Updates

By a vote of 35-0, full-time, non-tenure-track faculty at Emerson College’s Boston campus voted to join the existing collective bargaining chapter at Emerson College, ECCAAUP, which represents tenured and tenure-track faculty. The Emerson College administration had committed to recognize voluntarily a unified collective bargaining chapter if the full-time, non-tenure-track faculty won the election.

Yesterday the AAUP joined with the American Council on Education and other higher ed groups in an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court opposing Trump’s travel ban. The brief argues that people from the six countries identified in the ban should not be barred or deterred from entering the United States and contributing to our colleges and universities.

Today the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected attempts by a “free market” legal foundation to use public records requests to compel faculty members to release emails related to their climate research.

The AAUP signed on to a September 12 letter to congressional leaders urging them to pass legislation that would offer permanent protection to individuals currently participating in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Over seventy-five associations joined the community letter, initiated by the American Council on Education following the Trump administration's decision to rescind the policy that enabled nearly 800,000 individuals to receive temporary protection through the DACA program.

The AAUP is pleased to announce the appointment of Rachel Ida Buff as the new faculty editor of the online AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom. Buff, who will begin her term as editor with the ninth volume of JAF, is a professor of history, director of the Cultures and Communities Program, and coordinator of the Comparative Ethnic Studies Program at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. 

The AAUP, AFT, and AAC&U call on college and university presidents, members of governing boards, and other academic leaders to resist a campaign of harassment by endorsing this statement and making clear to all in their respective institutions that threats to individual members of the academic community, to academic freedom, and to freedom of expression on campus will not be tolerated.

The American Association of University Professors denounces in the strongest possible terms the decision by the Trump administration to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). This decision marks a continuation of the anti-immigrant racist policies that the administration has supported from the start.

After hearing from us, the administration of the University of Tampa has rescinded the firing of a contingent faculty member over a Tweet that led to an online harassment campaign against the professor and his family.