BY MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ AND MICHAEL DECESARE

Today, we released the report of an investigation into the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigating committee, of which we are co-chairs, was charged with reaching findings on whether and to what extent there were departures at eight institutions from AAUP-supported principles and standards of academic governance.

The Special Report: COVID-19 and Academic Governance focuses on eight institutions: Canisius College (NY), Illinois Wesleyan University, Keuka College (NY), Marian University (WI), Medaille College (NY), National University (CA), University of Akron, and Wittenberg University (OH). But the crisis in academic governance is widespread. As soon as news of this investigation was released, faculty members from a wide range of institutions contacted the AAUP’s staff with accounts of similar developments on their campuses, and news reports continued to pour in about the financial effects of the pandemic on other institutions. Our report, then, should be understood as illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Many institutions faced dire challenges in the 2020–21 academic year; for some, the pandemic exacerbated long-festering conditions. We found that, at other institutions, governing boards and administrations opportunistically exploited the pandemic, using it as an excuse to put aside established academic governance processes and unilaterally close programs and lay off faculty members. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the most serious challenges to academic governance in the last fifty years.

What We Found

• Faculty members faced the dilemma of either participating in ad hoc governance processes they knew to be flawed in the hope of shaping their outcomes or refusing on principle to participate at all, thereby allowing administrators and board members to move forward without them.
• Sudden, unilateral decisions by governing boards or administrations to set aside an institution’s regulations, in whole or in part, amount to declarations that agreed-upon rules and procedures can be discarded altogether in moments of crisis.
• Over the long term, sudden decisions to revise faculty handbooks unilaterally are possibly even more corrosive, since the procedures enshrined in those revisions will become permanent aspects of governance.
• Force majeure‒type clauses in collective bargaining agreements, faculty handbooks, and faculty contracts or letters of appointment provide administrations with a nuclear option that nullifies all the other financial exigency‒related provisions of those documents.
• At most of the institutions under investigation, restoring or maintaining financial health was the board and administration’s rationale for abandoning institutional regulations, disregarding fundamental principles and practices of academic governance, discontinuing academic programs, and terminating tenured appointments—yet financial exigency was not declared at any of the eight.
• There was scant evidence that the governing boards and administrations of the investigated institutions terminated the appointments of the affected faculty members based on considerations that violated their academic freedom; nevertheless, the committee did encounter overwhelming evidence that tenure—and, thus, academic freedom—has faced a frontal assault at these institutions and many others in the wake of the pandemic.
• The policies and procedures at the investigated institutions were generally adequate, yet boards and administrations, in the interest of rapid decision-making, chose to ignore, revise, or circumvent them, including those relevant to areas where the faculty exercises primary responsibility.
• AAUP policies and regulations regarding institutional governance, financial exigency, academic freedom and tenure, and academic due process remain broad and flexible enough to accommodate even the inconceivable disaster. We found no evidence that relevant AAUP-supported policies failed in any of the cases under investigation. Indeed, at most of the institutions included in this investigation, those policies were never given a chance to demonstrate their efficacy, either because they did not exist in institutional regulations or, more commonly, because they were unilaterally abandoned by the administration and governing board.
• The evidence suggests that this has been a watershed moment. There is no question that many colleges and universities are in financial distress, and many more will face daunting challenges in the next decade. The question is whether robust shared governance will survive those challenges.

What We Must Do

The best way to protect and preserve shared governance is through concerted efforts by your chapter on your campus. This work is not quick or easy, but it can be effective, and the consequences of not doing it are dire.

• Governing boards, administrations, and faculties must make a conscious, concerted, and sustained effort to ensure that all parties are conversant with, and cultivate respect for, the norms of shared governance as articulated in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities that was jointly formulated in 1966 by the AAUP, the American Council on Education, and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Each institutional component has decision-making authority based on its primary responsibilities. When faculty members opt to participate in a makeshift governance process, they should do so under the same conditions that govern their participation in the standing governance structure: they should be elected by the faculty rather than appointed by the administration, and they should be free to discuss the body’s work with their colleagues and report regularly to them.
• Faculty members should be exceptionally vigilant about changes to handbooks that may change the character of academic employment at their institutions irrevocably.
• Faculty should steadfastly oppose the inclusion of force majeure clauses in collective bargaining agreements, faculty contracts and letters of appointment, and faculty handbooks.
• Faculty should be centrally involved in deliberations about exigency; they should also object to any attempt to introduce new categories of financial crisis that would circumvent AAUP-supported standards on financial exigency.

Please read the full investigative report here.

Michael Bérubé, Pennsylvania State University
Michael DeCesare, Merrimack College; chair of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance