Introducing the New, Restructured AAUP

By Gwendolyn Bradley

As of January 1, 2013, the AAUP has reorganized into three interlocked entities under one umbrella. This change will better align our legal status with our evolving activities, our changing membership, and our ambitious aims for future programs and services. We expect that it will allow the more vigorous pursuit of fundraising, legislative lobbying at federal and state levels, program development, and union related activities.

The three entities are the AAUP Foundation, the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress, and the AAUP.

The foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, will seek to raise funds to support programs and education, advancing the traditional AAUP principles of academic freedom and shared governance, defining fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and ensuring higher education’s contribution to the common good.

The AAUP-CBC, previously an arm of the AAUP, is now its own organization, a labor union. As has been the case in the past, all AAUP chapters that engage in collective bargaining will be eligible to be members of the AAUP-CBC. The

AAUP-CBC’s mission is to support unionization as the most effective means for academic employees to protect shared governance and academic freedom, uphold professional standards and values, and promote higher education as an investment in our common future.

The AAUP itself, to which all individual members belong, has become a 501(c)(6) professional organization. The AAUP will continue to organize and support non-collective bargaining “advocacy” chapters and carry out work to defend academic freedom and shared governance, including policy development, investigations, and amicus briefs. State AAUP conferences will remain, and their operations will not be changed by restructuring.