Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure

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.

Developments Relating to Association Censure and Sanction

The Association’s staff has prepared the following brief accounts of favorable developments during the past year at institutions whose administrations have incurred AAUP censure (for departures from principles of academic freedom and tenure) or at institutions that are under sanction (for infringement of governance standards). For information about the current status of other censures or sanctions (listed respectively on pages 46 and 54), please contact the Association’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance.


 

Censure

Developments Relating to Association Censure and Sanction

The Association’s staff has prepared the following brief accounts of significant developments during the past year at institutions whose administrations have incurred AAUP censure (for departures from principles of academic freedom and tenure) or at institutions that are under AAUP sanction (for infringement of academic governance standards).

Defending the Freedom to Innovate: Faculty Intellectual Property Rights After Stanford v. Roche

This report is being issued in the midst of fundamental changes in the character of faculty rights and academic freedom. The purpose of the report is to put the dialog on intellectual property on a new foundation, one that leads to a principle-based restoration of faculty leadership in setting policy in this increasingly important area of university activity. Administration efforts to control the fruits of faculty scholarship augur a sea change in faculty employment conditions, one too often imposed without negotiation or consent.
 

Long-Serving Staff Member Bob Kreiser Retires

B. Robert Kreiser, who joined the Association’s staff in July 1982, retired in the middle of August.

Incentives to Forgo Tenure

Tenure is "indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society." So declares the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The academic community, however, has never lacked for proposals that would undermine tenure and thus its role in serving students and society. Among such current proposals, one in particular requires comment because it has surfaced in recent cases considered by Committee A.1  It proposes that prospective faculty members accept renewable term appointments and forgo consideration for tenure and/or that current faculty members renounce tenure in return for some advantage, such as a higher salary, accelerated leave, or other pecuniary consideration. Proponents of these agreements argue that they embody a free exchange of mutual benefit to the parties. If academic tenure withers in consequence, they claim, that only demonstrates that, in a free market, faculty will have demonstrated their unwillingness to support 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 Electronic Communications

A newly revised report issued for comment in December, Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications, brings up to date and expands the Association’s 2004 report on the same topic.

Freedom to Teach Statement

At its November meeting, the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure approved The Freedom to Teach, a short statement written in response to numerous queries regarding Association policy on the relationship between the academic freedom of individual faculty members in the classroom and collective faculty responsibility for the curriculum, particularly with regard to multisection courses.

Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance Violations at NEIU

An AAUP investigating committee’s report published in December deals with a case of tenure denial at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. The candidate, an assistant professor of linguistics, had been recommended for tenure successively during the 2011–12 academic year by his tenured linguistics colleagues, his department chair, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and, unanimously, the faculty’s elected University Personnel Committee.

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