BY KELLY HAND

Katherine Morrison at her 2016 conference presentation “Courageous Conversations: Teaching Race, Class, Gender, and Social Justice”

In 1967, during a period of intense student protests, the AAUP and four other groups issued a Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students. Many issues covered in the statement are as pertinent fifty years later as they were in 1967, and the AAUP invites proposals for presentations focused on these issues for our 2017 Annual Conference.

The issues include the following:

• Freedom of access to higher education
• Rights of students in the classroom
• Student rights outside the classroom (for example, in forming student groups or participating in protests)
• The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, national origin, and sexual orientation
• Evaluation of students
• The roles of faculty advisers of student groups
• Student-invited speakers
• The intersection of institutional disciplinary authority and the law
• Freedom of student press and other publications
• Student participation in institutional government
• Procedural standards in disciplinary proceedings

Presentations might also:

• Explore student protest movements of the past
• Analyze current student activism on race, student debt, gender, labor justice, or other issues
• Comment on the joint statement itself
• Discuss the rights of students to organize labor unions
• Explore the possibilities for student activism opened up by digital tools

Presentation proposals on other topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience are welcome.
We encourage proposals that raise questions, engage conference participants in discussion, and foster dialogue. Proposals will be accepted through Tuesday, December 13, 2016. To submit a proposal, visit the call for papers page on the AAUP website.

You may propose either a complete session, with two to four participants, or an individual presentation, with one presenter. Individual presentations, if accepted, will be grouped into sessions with other related individual presentations. Complete sessions may consist of a set of traditional presentations (a panel presentation), followed by Q&A, or may be structured as a roundtable discussion, designed to encourage more audience participation. Each presenter should generally expect to speak for about twenty minutes.

Activism and Art

Have student activists on your campus created posters, puppets, or other types of compelling protest art? We’d like to hear from you! Please send a description or photos along with contact information to gbradley@aaup.org.