2011 AAUP Updates

In dismissing the president of the University of Oregon without consultation with the university community, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education violated fundamental standards of shared governance.

The AAUP denounced a move by Middle Tennessee State University administrators to impose a demotion in rank on full-time non-tenure-track faculty while threatening to dismiss any who refuse. 

 As the California Faculty Association plans one-day strikes at two campuses, the AAUP issued a statement of support.

This week saw a historic and inspiring victory as Ohio voters decisively repealed legislation that would have severely restricted the collective bargaining rights of Ohio public-sector workers and especially faculty. Read a letter from the Ohio AAUP conference.

The AAUP has issued a supplemental report on Savannah College of Art and Design.

The AAUP encourages the exemption of interviews with legally competent adults from IRB oversight.

The American Association of University Professors stands in solidarity with the movement protesting the huge and growing gap between rich and poor.

The committee will look into discontinuance of academic programs within the University of Louisiana system and potential terminations of tenured appointments. 

The AAUP announced Friday that an investigating committee will visit Louisiana November 12-15 to look into discontinuance of academic programs within the University of Louisiana system and resulting potential termination of tenured appointments.

Faculty and students are taking back the campus Friday as the planned one-week strike ends.

A proposed new electronic communications policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was "put on hold" after the AAUP and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education warned, in a joint letter, that it would restrict student and faculty speech. 

Read a new issue brief on how to protect both academic freedom and the public’s right to know.

On August 18, the AAUP wrote to the Department of Education to laud the department’s efforts to address systemic gender inequalities in the US educational system. 

The AAUP has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in support of Loretta Capeheart, a tenured professor at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). 

The AAUP joined with three other groups in writing a letter to University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan urging her to reconsider a May 2011 agreement the university made with the American Tradition Institute. 

In order to encourage and recognize membership growth in AAUP chapters and state conferences, the national AAUP announced that it would award travel scholarships to the conferences and chapters who had the highest numbers of new members (both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total faculty). 

Update 4/12/11: At their recent meeting, the American Conference for Irish Studies passed a resolution supporting "the American Association of University Professors's efforts on behalf of academic freedom, shared governance, and tenure in Higher Education, and it endorses Chancellor Martin's affirmation of the value of academic freedom in her April 1 letter to the campus community."

Update 3/5/11: An investigation has been authorized by the AAUP general secretary and will proceed.

An AAUP committee will investigate the decision of administrators at SUNY Albany to discontinue four foreign-language degree programs plus the theater arts program in the College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY, Albany. 

Statement from AAUP President Cary Nelson regarding Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker's attempts to "balance the budget."