Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure

Professors of Practice

Report addressing a category of full-time non-tenure-track faculty appointments known as “professors of practice.”  It recommends, in accordance with Association principles, that these faculty members be accorded tenure's protections.

Freedom in the Classroom

Report assessing arguments made in support of recent legislative efforts to regulate classroom instruction.

The Use and Abuse of Faculty Suspensions

Report analyzing AAUP policy on the suspension of faculty members from teaching or research.

On Conditions of Employment at Overseas Campuses

Statement issued jointly by the American Association of University Professors and the Canadian Association of University Teachers.  It discusses the overseas expansion of U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities and makes recommendations regarding the working conditions of faculty and staff at overseas campuses.

New Academic Freedom Subcommittee

The AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has established a subcommittee to study and recommend procedural standards to ensure academic freedom in the conduct of politically controversial academic personnel decisions. The subcommittee members are Ernst Benjamin, former AAUP general secretary, chair; Debra Nails, Michigan State University; Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University; David Rabban, University of Texas at Austin and chair of Committee A; Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and AAUP president; and Gary Rhoades, AAUP general secretary.

Clark Atlanta University Report and Revised RIRs Now Online

The Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has authorized the publication of an investigating committee’s report on Clark Atlanta University. The report deals with the administration’s action, taken on stated grounds of an “enrollment emergency,” to dismiss fifty-five full-time faculty members, approximately one-fourth of the total faculty, effective immediately, in the middle of a semester. The affected professors were paid four weeks of unconditional severance salary.

Texas Medical Branch Report and Council Record Online

An ad hoc investigating committee’s report on the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has been posted on the AAUP’s Web site, having been authorized for publication by the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The report deals with the administration’s action, following a declaration of financial exigency after Hurricane Ike struck in 2008, to terminate over one hundred faculty appointments, including more than forty with tenure.

"Universities, the Major Battleground in the Fight for Reason and Capitalism"

Conditions placed on gifts from the BB&T Foundation range from the seemingly benign, funding for faculty and student research and a speaker series, to the sharply contentious, required reading of Ayn Rand.

Report on Controversial Personnel Decisions

Politically controversial cases involving college and university teachers spurred the founding of the AAUP and have frequently recurred.

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