All AAUP Policies & Reports

This 2016 report concerns the action taken on February 25, 2016, by the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri to dismiss Dr. Melissa A. Click, an assistant professor of communication, from the faculty of the University of Missouri on charges of misconduct without having afforded her the faculty hearing called for under both the university’s regulations and the recommended standards of the American Association of University Professors.

This 2016 report concerns the action taken on December 11, 2015, by the administration of the College of Saint Rose to eliminate twenty-seven academic programs and terminate the appointments of fourteen tenured and nine tenure-track faculty members as the result of an “academic program prioritization” process.

This 2016 report evaluates the history and current uses of Title IX and identifies tensions between current interpretations of Title IX and the academic freedom essential for campus life to thrive. The report makes recommendations for how best to address the problem of campus sexual assault and harassment while also protecting academic freedom, free speech, and due process.

This 2015 report describes departures from shared governance standards in the hiring of new University of Iowa President J. Bruce Harreld, appointed by the Iowa Board of Regents in spite of overwhelming objections from faculty. The investigation found that in contrast to historical practice at the university, which had been to involve faculty fully in presidential searches, the board designed this search process specifically to prevent any meaningful faculty role in the selection of the final candidate.

This 2015 report describes severe departures from generally accepted standards of academic governance at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey and details how the administration sharply diminished the role and influence of the faculty in the college’s governance system.

This 2015 report concerns the dismissal of professor Teresa Buchanan from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, already on the list of censured administrations. Dr. Buchanan, a specialist in early childhood education, was being evaluated for promotion when a district school superintendent and an LSU student filed complaints against her for use of profanity and bawdy language. Her dean suspended her from teaching, and, despite a faculty hearing committee's recommendation against dismissal, the LSU board of supervisors accepted the administration's recommendation that she be dismissed.

This 2015 report concerns the cases of seven full- time faculty members at Felician College, most of them long-serving, who were notified in late January (along with nine colleagues who did not contact the AAUP) that their services were being terminated in June. The administration initially attributed its actions to a decline in enrollment that it claimed had resulted in financial exigency. The report also discusses the deplorable conditions for academic freedom and faculty governance in the absence of a tenure system.

This 2015 report finds that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) administration and the board of trustees of the University of Illinois violated principles of academic freedom when they withdrew a tenured faculty appointment that had been offered to Professor Steven Salaita. The job offer was withdrawn after Professor Salaita made a series of impassioned Twitter posts expressing outrage about the war in Gaza.

This 2015 report finds that University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's administration violated commonly accepted academic standards when it terminated the appointments of two professors. One professor had twelve years of service and the other had thirty. Both had been recommended for “renewal of tenure” by the faculty personnel committee.

This 2014 statement concerns tensions over control of the fruits of faculty scholarship that have been slowly building since the 1980s. There have long been differences of opinion over ownership of patentable inventions, but increasing institutional interest in declaring ownership of faculty intellectual property subject to copyright has escalated.