Academic Freedom and Tenure Investigative Reports

This report concerns the action taken on September 15, 2022, by the administration of Emporia State University to terminate the appointments of thirty tenured and tenure-track faculty members under a temporary "COVID-related workforce management policy" adopted by the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) in January 2021. The investigating committee concluded that the mass dismissal "is a signal event in American higher education" and in violation of several AAUP-recommended standards concerning academic freedom and tenure, such as the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and Regulation 4 of the derivative Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Additionally, the report concludes that the Kansas Board of Regents actively enabled the administration of Emporia State University in these violations, and "initiated the process that assaulted tenure and imperiled academic freedom at Emporia State University."

This report addresses the actions taken in September 2021 by the administration of Indiana University Northwest that led to the dismissal and revocation of tenure of Dr. Mark McPhail. The investigating committee found that IUN violated several AAUP-recommended standards of academic due process and the protection of intramural speech in the dismissal of Dr. McPhail, without any appropriate proceeding or disciplinary process. Furthermore, the report concludes that the behavioral complaints brought against Dr. McPhail that resulted in his termination relied on “racist tropes of incompetent, angry, and physically violent Black men” without any credible basis in truth, and that the general "conditions for academic governance at Indiana University Northwest can therefore only be described as unsound."

This report, prepared by the Association’s staff, concerns the action taken on October 13, 2021, by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia to remove the procedural protections of tenure from the system’s post-tenure review policy.

This report concerns actions taken in spring 2018 by the administration of Nunez Community College to terminate the services of Professor Richard Schmitt following his twenty-second year on the faculty. These actions were taken in apparent violation of his academic freedom and without affordance of the protections of academic due process to which he was entitled as the result of having obtained de facto tenure at the institution through length of full-time service.

The report of the investigating committee concerns the administration’s actions to suspend from her teaching responsibilities—initially, for stated safety concerns—a sixth-year doctoral student with a part-time appointment as lecturer for the 2017–18 academic year. The lecturer, Ms. Courtney Lawton, received threats after a video recording of her participation in a demonstration protesting an on-campus recruitment table for Turning Point USA was disseminated on the internet. The administration subsequently extended Ms. Lawton’s suspension through the end of her term of appointment, for stated reasons of misconduct but without affording her an appropriate hearing.

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of the Community College of Aurora, during the fourth week of the fall 2016 semester, to terminate the appointment of part-time instructor of philosophy Nathanial Bork without affordance of academic due process. Mr. Bork was dismissed after conveying his intention to send to the college's accreditor a report detailing his “deep concerns” about the college’s Gateway to Success initiative, which modified certain entry-level liberal arts courses in an effort to improve their pass rates.

This report concerns the cases of seven full- time faculty members at Felician College, most of them long-serving, who were notified in late January (along with nine colleagues who did not contact the AAUP) that their services were being terminated in June. The administration initially attributed its actions to a decline in enrollment that it claimed had resulted in financial exigency. The report also discusses the deplorable conditions for academic freedom and faculty governance in the absence of a tenure system.

This report finds that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) administration and the board of trustees of the University of Illinois violated principles of academic freedom when they withdrew a tenured faculty appointment that had been offered to Professor Steven Salaita. The job offer was withdrawn after Professor Salaita made a series of impassioned Twitter posts expressing outrage about the war in Gaza.

The administration of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago violated principles of academic freedom when it denied tenure to a candidate who had opposed its wishes in a dispute between linguistics faculty and teachers of English as a second language (TESL), concludes an AAUP investigating committee in this new report.

Report investigating the declaration of financial exigency at Southern University, Baton Rouge (SUBR), and the subsequent terminations of tenured professors and restructuring of academic programs.

Report finding administrators discontinued or consolidated academic programs and arbitrarily selected certain tenured professors in the programs for termination of appointment.

2011 report finding violations of academic freedom in two cases at Louisiana’s flagship public institution, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, that are different in the administrative officers involved and in the matters under dispute but alike in putting core issues of aca demic freedom to the test. The first case, affecting a nontenured associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in his seventeenth year of full-time service on the faculty, tested the rela tionship between freedom of research and publication and freedom of extramural utterance in a politically charged atmosphere. The second case, affecting a tenured full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in her thirty-first year on the faculty, tested the freedom of a classroom teacher to assign student grades.

The report of the investigating committee concerns the actions taken by the administration of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, after a declaration of financial exigency at that institution by the University of Texas Board of Regents, to terminate the appointments of more than 120 faculty members, approximately one-third of them tenured. The actions followed a suspension of operations at the medical branch and its affected hospital as a result of the devastation inflicted on September 13, 2008, by Hurricane Ike. Faculty members received between six and nine months of notice, depending on their tenure status and length of service.

Report concerning the suspension and subsequent dismissal of a faculty member by the administration of Stillman College on grounds of “malicious gossip or public verbal abuse" without due process.

Report concerning action taken by the administration of Olivet Nazarene University to remove a tenured professor from his usual teaching responsibilities and to prohibit the use of his book in all university courses. The president took this action after a controversy arose within the university’s denominational constituency over the professor’s views on evolution.

Report addressing tenure and de facto tenure, due process, adequacy of notice and the ramifications of grading issues and academic freedom

Report regarding the  “nearly universal departure from (or in some cases complete abandonment of) personnel and other policies” by five New Orleans institutions―the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, the University of New Orleans, Southern University at New Orleans, Loyola University New Orleans, and Tulane University―as they contended with the disaster that befell the city and its universities. 

Report discussing issues including campus procedures, the president’s reasons for dismissing a faculty member, and the effect of the dismissal on academic freedom at Our Lady of Holy Cross College.

Report concerning due process and academic freedom at Greenville College, a religiously affiliated institution.

Report dealing with resignation, dismissal, and academic freedom at Cumberland College, a religiously affiliated institution.

Report discussing the decision made by the central administration of the City University of New York and deals with the issues of academic freedom, due process, collective bargaining, and national security.

Report concerning the dismissal of a professor on stated grounds of insubordination; the termination of the appointments of four other full-time faculty members on stated grounds of need to reduce the size of the college's faculty and staff; and the earlier termination of the services of a program director who sought the assistance of the Association based upon her faculty function of teaching courses at the college.

Report examining the University of Dubuque's termination of tenured faculty, the faculty's role in the process, and faculty governance.

Report addressing four issues at Albertus Magnus College: the procedures used by the administration to decide that Professor Hartwig was not to be reappointed, his suspension, the reasons for the actions against Professor Hartwig, and the implications of these reasons for academic freedom.

Report concerning the actions taken by the administration of Lawrence Technological University regarding appointment termination following a decision to discontinue the undergraduate programs in business management.

Report concerning the action taken by the administration of Bennington College to terminate an instructor with presumptive tenure.

Report regarding action taken by the administration of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design to dismiss five senior members of the faculty without cause and without hearings.

Report regarding tenure and the lack of due process in dismissal proceedings at Garland County Community College, now National Park College.

Report dealing with a declaration of financial exigency as justification for terminating the appointments of presumptively tenured faculty.

Report concerning the action taken by the administration of the University of Bridgeport to terminate the appointments of two professors on thirty days' notice. At the time of this action the professors had each completed more than thirty years of service at the university.

Report concerning the actions of the administration of North Greenville College in terminating the appointments of two professors without affording them the safeguards of academic due process . Further, since tenure is no longer granted at North Greenville College, its procedural protections are not available to the majority of faculty members who serve indefinitely on term appointments renewable at the administration's discretion.

Report concerning the action taken by the administration of the New Community College of Baltimore to terminate a tenured faculty member without cause or due process following an announced termination of tenure commitments with the transfer of the college's control from the city of Baltimore to the state of Maryland.

This 1989 report involves a Catholic University of America professor who has not been dismissed from his position but who, with conditions imposed upon his teaching that he considers unacceptable, had chosen to take a leave of absence and teach elsewhere. Although the events of primary interest in the case occurred within three years, they can best be understood in the context of a history spanning more than two decades. This case has been the subject of two books and of countless magazine and newspaper articles both in this country and abroad, and aspects of  it have been argued at length before a faculty committee and a superior court; few Association cases, it may be said, have been so widely publicized or so profusely documented. Additionally, the case arose and developed at a university with a governance structure that has no exact counterpart in this country, even among other Catholic institutions.

1988 Report dealing with the denial of due process and lack of protections of academic freedom at Hillsdale College. The investigating committee concluded that the administration, in declining to provide the faculty member with a statement of the reasons for not reappointing him and in failing to afford opportunity for review by a faculty body of his allegation relating to academic freedom, denied him basic procedural safeguards to which he was entitled under the Association's Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. The absence of these procedural safeguards, the committee found, leaves the faculty of Hillsdale College inadequately protected against an improper exercise of administrative power.

This 1987 report describes actions by the administration of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico to suspend and then to dismiss a tenured professor, without any severance salary, once it was informed that she had remarried in a civil ceremony after a previous Catholic marriage had ended, thirteen years earlier, in civil divorce. The administration justified its action by stating that faculty members at the university, which was canonically established by the Holy See, must adhere even in their private lives to the laws of the church, under which the professor's marital life following her civil remarriage was considered to be sinful. At the time of her initial appointment she was warned orally of this constraint but she states that she explicitly refused to acquiesce in it.

Report concerning the administration of American International College's dismissal of a faculty member after thirteen years of service without setting forth specific cause for its action and without offering him a hearing and other safeguards of academic due process.

Report regarding retrenchments at the State University of New York that were initiated by the University administration without appropriate consultation with the faculty and without any showing of a financial exigency. They were overseen by the administration with disregard for the rights of tenure, for due notice, and for the role of the faculty in institutional government.

Report regarding the administration of Concordia Seminary's 1972 termination of a faculty member based on outside ecclesiastical authorities' displeasure with his views on matters that fell within his academic competence, despite the recommendations of his colleagues and inadequate notice of the termination of his services