Academic Freedom and Tenure Investigative Reports

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Southern University, Baton Rouge

Report investigating the declaration of financial exigency at Southern University, Baton Rouge (SUBR), and the subsequent terminations of tenured professors and restructuring of academic programs.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: National Louis University

Report dealing with the National Louis University administration’s actions in spring 2012 to discontinue nine degree programs and five nondegree certificate programs, to close four departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, and to terminate the appointments of at least sixty-three full-time faculty members, sixteen with tenure.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Northeastern Illinois University

The administration of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago violated principles of academic freedom when it denied tenure to a candidate who had opposed its wishes in a dispute between linguistics faculty and teachers of English as a second language (TESL), concludes an AAUP investigating committee in this new report.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

This 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.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This 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 The job offer was withdrawn after Professor Salaita made a series of impassioned Twitter posts expressing outrage about the war in Gaza.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: University of Southern Maine

This report addresses the actions taken by administrators at the University of Southern Maine to discontinue, reduce, and consolidate numerous academic departments and to reduce the size of the faculty by fifty positions at the end of the fall 2014 semester. The investigating committee sought to determine whether the program closures and retrenchments were conducted in accordance with AAUP-supported principles and due-process standards. The committee concludes that the USM administration violated the Association’s standards on financial exigency and program discontinuance, as well as those on academic governance.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Felician College

This 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.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, A Supplementary Report on a Censured Administration

This supplementary report raises questions about the dismissal of professor Teresa Buchanan from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, which has been on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations since 2012. Professor Buchanan, a specialist in early childhood education with an unblemished eighteen-year performance record, was being evaluated for promotion to full professor when a district school superintendent and an LSU student filed complaints against her for occasional use of profanity and bawdy language. Her dean immediately suspended her from teaching, and eventually, despite a faculty hearing committee's unanimous recommendation against dismissal, the LSU board of supervisors accepted the administration's recommendation that she be dismissed. The faculty senate at LSU also condemned the administration's actions, and, represented by attorneys from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Professor Buchanan has filed a lawsuit against the university, for which the AAUP Foundation has provided financial assistance.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: College of Saint Rose

This 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.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: University of Missouri (Columbia)

This 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 action followed more than three months of controversy surrounding Professor Click’s confrontations with two University of Missouri students on November 9, 2015. 

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