BY JOHN K. WILSON

On August 31, Illinois Wesleyan University announced that three tenured faculty would be given one-year terminal contracts and then fired because of controversial plans to discontinue academic programs in anthropology, French, Italian, and  religious studies while expanding programs in economics and business.

The AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance sent a letter on August 28 to the president of Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), S. Georgia Nugent, and to the chair of the university’s board of trustees, Timothy Szerlong, regarding action taken by the board on July 16 to discontinue programs in anthropology, French, Italian, and religious studies and fire up to six tenured faculty members who teach in these programs. The letter discusses faculty concerns that the decision-making process that preceded this action departed from normative standards of academic governance, noting reports that the administration and board “either ignored or minimized the faculty’s stated concerns” about the process. At the time the AAUP sent the letter, IWU had planned to fire six tenured professors.

IWU’s faculty handbook follows AAUP guidelines, and includes strong protections for faculty that it appears the administration has directly violated by failing to get faculty approval to end academic programs and remove tenured professors. The fired faculty are entitled to appeal the decision to a faculty committee, which can determine whether the decision to discontinue these programs was done for educational reasons and received faculty approval, and whether the faculty being fired were given the opportunity to be assigned to another position.