AAUP Updates

As Professor Steven Thrasher faces potential discipline for exercising his academic freedom, the AAUP urges Northwestern University to remain committed to academic due process and academic freedom as well as anti-discrimination regulations designed to protect historically marginalized communities.

Thrasher, holder of the Daniel Renberg chair in the Medill School of Journalism, is a nationally recognized, decorated journalist and scholar of race, LGBTQIA identity, and infectious disease. Despite his exemplary research and teaching record, Thrasher has been summarily placed on leave and suspended from teaching while an ad hoc faculty committee has reportedly been assembled to investigate whether he should be sanctioned for alleged antisemitism and “lack of objectivity.” These charges stem from attempts by Thrasher and several colleagues to de-escalate tensions at Northwestern’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment in April by forming a human chain between students and police officers.

AAUP president Todd Wolfson joins the UM AAUP chapter in condemning the reported action of the UM administration and board to rescind a job offer to Professor Raz Segal in response to outside political pressure. 

The AAUP is excited to be kicking off a new organizing campaign, Organize Every Campus. The program will help hone and develop member and leader organizing skills so that we can stand together, fight back, and build a better future for ourselves, our students, and higher education.

The AAUP has released a new statement which holds that, when appropriately designed and implemented, diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria for faculty appointment, reappointment, tenure, and promotion are compatible with academic freedom and may serve as an important means of fostering a diverse and inclusive academic environment.

Aaron Nisenson will serve as interim executive director of the AAUP while a search for a director is underway. Aaron has served as senior counsel and director of the legal department at the AAUP since 2013 and speaks and writes extensively on higher education, faculty rights, and constitutional, labor, and employment law. Aaron has litigated labor, employment, and First Amendment cases in federal and state courts and has directed the litigation and representational work of dozens of attorneys. He has authored amicus briefs submitted in the US Supreme Court, and in federal and state appellate courts on constitutional, labor and employment law issues.

The AAUP will conduct an inquiry into the case of Professor Maura Finkelstein, who was first summarily suspended from her tenured position at Muhlenberg College and then dismissed because of a student complaint regarding her extramural speech and conduct related to the war in Gaza.

The dismissal raises serious concerns about academic freedom at Muhlenberg. It also appears that the Muhlenberg administration has not followed its own regulations regarding dismissal, or incorporated a crucial element in the AAUP’s understanding of academic due process—that a dismissal action must be preceded by an adjudicative hearing before an elected faculty body in which the administration bears the burden of demonstrating just cause for dismissal.

AAUP in the News

Thu, 09/26/2024  |  The Intercept

“This is the first case that we’ve seen,” said Anita Levy, senior program officer at the AAUP, an organization that advocates for faculty rights and academic freedom and seeks to hold higher education institutions accountable when standards are violated. “The apparent violations of her academic freedom are quite egregious, especially because they appear to primarily involve her posts on social media, what we would call her extramural speech.”

“We are taking this case seriously.”

Wed, 09/18/2024  |  Tampa Bay Times

Florida professors are still eyeing jobs in other states, and those who remain say it’s getting harder to fill vacant positions at their universities, according to a recent survey of faculty in Southern states administered by several state conferences of the AAUP.

Sun, 09/01/2024  |  Forbes

A 2023 AAUP report found that 68% of all college and university faculty were on contingent appointments in 2021, compared to 47% in 1987. Among faculty with full-time appointments, 24% held tenure in 2021, a substantial decrease from 1987 when 39% were tenured. As the conversion from tenure-track faculty to contingent instructors continues, the rate of faculty unionization can be expected to increase as well.

Mon, 08/26/2024  |  Financial Times

“We are seeing multiple schools adopting new restrictions on speech without respecting governance procedures. They will discourage protests, have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and threaten harsh sanctions without due process.”

Fri, 08/23/2024  |  Chronicle of Higher Education

As Nelson Mandela told the African National Congress: “In some cases … it might be correct to boycott, and in others it might be unwise and dangerous. In still other cases another weapon of political struggle might be preferred. A demonstration, a protest march, a strike, or civil disobedience might be resorted to, all depending on the actual conditions at the given time.”

Both the 2006 report and the 2024 statement cite that quotation approvingly. Cary Nelson nonetheless thinks otherwise. Between the two Nelsons, the AAUP sides with Mandela.

Mon, 08/19/2024  |  Chronicle of Higher Education

It is Nelson, not the AAUP, who has politicized the question of academic freedom by objecting to its extension to faculty and students who, for principled reasons, might support academic boycotts in the name of those systematically denied it. Careful, thoughtful AAUP policy is still “the gold standard for academic freedom.” The alternative Cary Nelson offers — a selective principle, an exclusionary practice, driven by a hardline Zionism — is a corruption of that enduring standard.

Upcoming Events

October 16, 2024

Part of our fall series of workshops for collective bargaining chapters. This workshop is about gaining or strengthening AAUP Redbook policy in your collective bargaining agreement. We'll talk about different approaches to writing and negotiating contract language and look at specific examples.

October 16, 2024

Part of the webinar series "Academic Freedom School: Defending Academic Freedom in Florida." Panelists include Risa Lieberwitz and Jennifer Proffitt, and the discussion will be moderated by Tim Cain.

October 24, 2024

Part of our fall series of workshops for collective bargaining chapters. In this workshop, we'll explore how to map out an organizing strategy during bargaining. We’ll discuss how to bring members into the bargaining process as active participants through the use of an escalation of tactics. Bargaining team members, contract action team members, union officers, and rank-and-file members are all welcome.

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