BY MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ AND MICHAEL DECESARE
In September, the AAUP announced an investigation of the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the pandemic. The investigation’s initial focus was on seven institutions; the following month, an eighth was added to the list. Never before in the Association’s 106-year history has a governance investigation involving multiple institutions been undertaken.
The investigating committee, of which we are co-chairs, is charged with reaching findings on whether and to what extent there were departures at the eight institutions from AAUP-supported principles and standards of academic governance, as set forth in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities and derivative AAUP policy documents. The institutions included in the investigation are Canisius College (NY), Illinois Wesleyan University, Keuka College (NY), Marian University (WI), Medaille College (NY), National University (CA), the University of Akron (OH), and Wittenberg University (OH).
The committee has now concluded interviews with the principal parties at each institution and completed our analysis of the voluminous documentation associated with each of the eight cases. Taken together, the interviews and documents constitute the evidentiary basis of the committee’s findings, the first of which is that we are in the midst of the worst crisis in academic governance in decades.
The committee is drafting a report that details additional findings regarding governing boards’ and administrations’ actions to dismiss tenured faculty, abrogate faculty contracts, abolish faculty governance bodies, suspend faculty handbook provisions, and invoke force majeure clauses in collective bargaining agreements, among others. The report will conclude with general observations regarding the current and future conditions for shared governance, academic freedom, tenure, and due process across the country’s institutions of higher education.
We anticipate that the investigating committee report will be distributed in the weeks ahead to the relevant parties at each of the eight institutions for comment and corrections of fact. These comments will be taken into account in the preparation of the final report before it is published.
Michael Bérubé, Pennsylvania State University
Michael DeCesare, Merrimack College; chair of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance
National University was in breech of AAUP protocols and California Labor laws well before the pandemic. It has laid off dozens of faculty without due process, especially those who legitimately claimed overtime when California changed its labor laws to accommodate overtime for adjuncts.
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Contingent faculty have been the “canaries in the coal mine” for decades now regarding abuses in academic governance. It was bound to spread into the ranks of tenure lines, especially in a national crisis. I think that we need ALL-faculty unions that benefit all ranks of faculty, not just dominated by tenure-lines, and that means contingent faculty have to be willing to serve as well. That has largely not happened, and now the distrust among the ranks seems baked in. We need a radical effort focused on solidarity among all faculty. I say “we,” but for many of us who are contingent, we have already been terminated and our academic careers effectively ended. I do wish you the best, though, and hope that the next generation of academics have better working lives.
My former union, the PSC, represented BOTH tenured and adjunct faculty at CUNY. There was/is a clear conflict of interest here. For example, BY UNION CONTRACT, contingent faculty do not have academic freedom or the freedom of speech rights supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment.