2020 AAUP Updates

AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum has issued a statement on campus responses to the coronavirus.

The AAUP has created a resource page for the higher ed community on the coronavirus (COVID-19).

Remarks from Henry Reichman, second vice president of the AAUP and chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, read at a March 2 press conference held by faculty organizing group  in support of striking UC Santa Cruz graduate workers.

The AAUP's Council has issued the following statement of support for the striking graduate student workers at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The AAUP sent a letter today to the administration of Babson College regarding the case of Asheen Phansey, a part-time faculty member who was summarily dismissed on January 9 after posting a jocular comment on Facebook concerning President Trump’s tweeted threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites.

The AAUP released a report on the dismissal of Jane Harty, a part-time faculty member with forty years of service in the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University. The report found that the PLU administration had acted in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure when it summarily dismissed her and then acted in bad faith by conducting a dismissal hearing the report calls a “sham exercise.” 

The AAUP submitted comments to the National Labor Relations Board opposing a proposed rule that would bar many graduate assistants from engaging in collective bargaining. The AAUP’s comments clearly demonstrate that graduate assistants have the right to unionize because they are employees under the National Labor Relations Act and that unionization advances their academic freedom. We urge the National Labor Relations Board to reject the proposed rule.

The American Association of University Professors joins scholars in India and around the world in condemning the violent assault on faculty and students January 5 at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. We support the right of students everywhere to peacefully protest injustice. Attempts to crush their protests with violence are nothing short of a blatant attack on academic freedom and democracy itself.