2024 AAUP Updates

The AAUP submitted testimony in opposition of a proposed bill in the North Dakota state legislature that would effectively end tenure at two higher education institutions, with the potential to extend the policy to all public colleges and universities in the state. This bill establishes a dangerous precedent that threatens academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance and further entrenches the politicization of higher education.

Today the AAUP published an investigative report on the summary suspension and dismissal of Dr. Mark McPhail, a tenured professor of communication at Indiana University Northwest. The investigating committee found that the administration disregarded AAUP-supported standards of academic due process and violated McPhail's academic freedom.

The AAUP has appointed a special committee to look into recent attacks on higher education in the state of Florida.

The AAUP condemns the decision made by the presidents of the Florida College System to re-evaluate course offerings in order to root out any content that promotes "critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality." The AAUP is prepared to take necessary action against the FCS, including investigation and censure.

The AAUP has launched an inquiry into the decision of Hamline University administrators not to rehire part-time instructor Erika López Prater after a Muslim student complained about López Prater's showing an Islamic painting of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class. Since this decision raises central questions of academic freedom, a committee of inquiry will visit Hamline's campus in February to interview the affected parties. The committee will prepare a report of its findings for publication.

The AAUP joined the AFT and AFSCME in filing an amicus brief supporting the Biden administration's efforts toward student debt relief. 

The US Department of Education's proposal includes promising reforms that would help numerous borrowers. The proposal would lift the qualifying discretionary income cap, reduce monthly payments, and decrease time to forgiveness for those with undergraduate loans, providing much-needed relief. There is still work to do to ease the burden for all borrowers, including many graduate student and Parent PLUS loan borrowers.

The AAUP is troubled to learn that an art history instructor at Hamline University suffered repercussions from the university’s administration after showing a slide, in a class on Islamic art, of a fourteenth-century Islamic painting of the Prophet Muhammad. According to news reports, the administration announced that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom” and declined to renew the adjunct instructor’s appointment, asserting that “because the instructor was an adjunct, her dismissal was not a firing.”