2012 AAUP Updates

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.

This statement argues that requiring faculty members to sign confidentiality agreements as a requirement to serve on university committees is in most cases inconsistent with widely accepted standards of shared governance and with the concept of serving as a representative.

Please sign this national petition calling for a moratorium on the implementation of Pathways at CUNY.  The “reform” agenda that brought relentless testing and widespread privatization to K-12 schools has surfaced in higher education.  

University of Northern Iowa president Benjamin Allen appeared to engage in retaliation when he made prejudicial and inflammatory statements about a professor to the media, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum charges.

The AAUP held its annual Shared Governance Conference from October 26 through 28, 2012.

Non-tenure-track full-time faculty at Wright State today voted overwhelmingly to be represented in collective bargaining by a local AAUP chapter.

The AAUP sent a letter to CUNY Chancellor Goldstein expressing concerns over an e-mail message from Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Karen Steele threatening sweeping reprisals against the English department following its rejection of proposed curricular changes relating to the teaching of composition courses mandated under the Pathways initiative.

Ashley Dawson, a professor of English at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, has been named the editor of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom

The AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom seeks scholarly articles relating to the topic of academic freedom and globalization for its 2013 volume.

Chicago battle has important ramifications for all educators.  

A new report out from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education focuses on problems faced by contingent faculty and their students at the start of the term. The report is based on a survey by the New Faculty Majority of five hundred faculty members.

The Wayne State faculty need your help NOW! Please join us in supporting the WSU Negotiating Team in their attempt to preserve tenure at the university.

The California Faculty Association (CFA) and the California State University announced a tentative agreement on the faculty contract. "It's a fair agreement in the context of hard times," said Lillian Taiz, of the California Faculty Association, "We are disappointed we were not able to get a raise, but that wasn't in the cards.

The AAUP has joined with nearly three thousand national, state, and local organizations to support funding non-defense discretionary spending, or NDD. These programs reach every part of our lives, from public safety and infrastructure to research and education.

After two faculty bargaining units were certified last week, the University of Illinois at Chicago administration has indicated it will stop fighting recognition and proceed to bargaining. 

As the AAUP has documented time and time again, the proportion of faculty appointments that are “contingent”—lacking the benefits and protections of tenure and a planned long-term relationship with an institution—has increased dramatically over the past few decades. By 2009—the latest year for which national data are available—75 percent of US faculty appointments were off the tenure track, and 60 percent were part-time.

Today, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, of which the AAUP is a member, released the results of its highly anticipated survey of contingent faculty. The survey, which received nearly 30,000 responses, provides a detailed look at the working conditions associated with contingent faculty appointments—an appointment type that now constitutes the majority of faculty jobs. This initial survey report focuses on findings pertaining to faculty in part-time positions and suggests that, even as colleges and universities rely more and more on faculty in part-time positions, the salaries, benefits, and working conditions of those faculty members stagnates.

The summary dismissal of a contingent faculty member at Texas A & M University-San Antonio (TAMUS) raises serious concerns for the AAUP.  A letter was sent to the TAMUS administration yesterday conveying these concerns. Read the AAUP's letter (.pdf)

The AAUP is proud to announce that Mark G. Pearce, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, will be speaking to our Annual Conference on Saturday, June 16. His address will be titled "NLRB: from the Attic to the Kitchen" and will happen as part of a special plenary presentation at 2:00 p. m.

The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom is an online journal that seeks to develop international discussion of academic freedom and related issues. It focuses on scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to shared governance, tenure, the structure of the academy, and collective bargaining.