2021 AAUP Updates

The AAUP signed onto a reply comment addressing opposition to its previously submitted long-form comment seeking an exemption from a prohibition on circumventing technological protection measures for text and data mining (TDM) of lawfully accessed motion pictures and lawfully accessed literary works distributed electronically. The reply comment was submitted to the US Copyright Office with Authors Alliance and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in favor of Jennifer Freyd in an appeal that the AAUP supported with an amicus brief. The appeals court found that she had alleged sufficient facts to proceed with a suit, which a lower court had dismissed, against the University of Oregon for pay discrimination based on significant pay disparities with male faculty members.

We stand in sorrow and solidarity with Asian and Asian-American communities, who are facing an escalating series of racist attacks. We condemn these attacks and the racist rhetoric that fuels them.

The AAUP submitted an amicus brief yesterday in the Oregon Court of Appeals in a case that involves the distribution of anti-union FAQs by Oregon State University. The appeal arose from an Oregon Employment Relations Board decision finding that the university had violated a state law requiring neutrality in union organizing drives.

The AAUP wrote on March 10 to Brad Johnson, interim president of Southwest Baptist University (MO), regarding the case of Dr. Zach Manis, the institution’s only philosophy professor. The SBU administration issued notice of termination to Professor Manis without affording him academic due process and in apparent violation of his academic freedom. According to a former member of the university’s governing board, the termination was part of a purge of faculty members whose theological views were insufficiently conservative.

In a major victory for graduate employees at private universities, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced today that it was withdrawing a rule proposed in late 2019 that would have barred graduate assistants from engaging in union organizing and collective bargaining under the protection of federal law.

The AAUP issued a statement on three Iowa Legislature proposals that raise troubling concerns about academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus by ending tenure protections, surveying university employees' political affiliations, and complicating campus free speech protections. The legislation proposed in Iowa would not only be unnecessary, but it could also impose on institutions potentially costly and overly bureaucratic burdens.

The AAUP today wrote H. Neil Matkin, president of Collin College (TX), to urge the immediate rescission of nonrenewal notices issued to Professors Audra Heaslip and Suzanne Jones, both of whom had served the institution beyond what the AAUP regards as the maximum period of probation. The administration failed to afford them a faculty hearing and a stated basis for the nonrenewals was their critique of the administration’s COVID-19 policies.