2014 AAUP Updates

We're pleased to announce that the council of the American Educational Research Association voted last month to endorse the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Read about how AAUP budget analysis has emerged as a powerful weapon for faculty members battling administrators over spending.

The AAUP filed an amicus brief with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that graduate assistants at private sector institutions should be considered employees with collective bargaining rights.

In this case, the Supreme Court declined requests to radically alter agency fee law, but refused to allow the charging of agency fees to certain “partial-public” employees.

Allowing any third-party control of academic matters is inconsistent with principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities. Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore these principles.

Day two of the AAUP’s Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education and One Hundredth Annual Meeting was highlighted by a plenary luncheon presentation by Daniel Maxey, Co-Principal Investigator at The Delphi Project and a Dean’s Fellow in Urban Education Policy in the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and the Pullias Center for Higher Education.

On Thursday, June 12, 2014, the AAUP’s One Hundredth Annual Meeting convened in Washington, DC. Hank Reichman, chair of the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, delivered the meeting's opening plenary address—“Can I Tweet That? Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications”—on the impact of digital documentation and communication on academic freedom.

A new animated video raises serious concerns about the claims and promises being made by the online education industry about the quality of its higher education programs.The video is part of a national grassroots campaign to inform families, educators, higher education leaders, and policymakers about the serious concerns of faculty members and educational staff who are on the front lines of higher education.