Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Due Process

Statement promoting public understanding and support of academic freedom and tenure and agreement upon procedures to ensure them in colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.

Joint statement supplementing the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure by providing a formulation of the “academic due process” that should be observed in dismissal proceedings.

Report addressing the increasing tendency to add the criterion of “collegiality” to faculty evaluations and enumerates why this practice should be discouraged.

Report examining the costs to academic freedom incurred by the current trend toward overreliance on part and full-time non-tenure-track faculty.  The report recommends that for the good of institutions, of the educational experiences of students, and of the quality of education, the proportion of tenured and tenure-track faculty should be increased.