BY MATTHEW BOEDY
Every AAUP member should be concerned about the new accreditation group recently birthed in Florida. This week Louisiana became the seventh state to say it was joining.
While only for now targeting states in the South the group’s business plan shows its strategy is to take on as clients public schools in any state. Its political strategy has been named by Governor Ron DeSantis as eliminating “woke” from schools. The governor of Louisiana said its goal was the ending of DEI-driven mandates. Its academic goals are to “streamline” accreditation so that institutions can innovate more quickly.
Whatever the words by its supporters, it would be the state controlling higher education to such a degree as to merit comparison to the era when the AAUP was founded. Whatever the faults of the accreditation system and any specific outlet, the system has stood in the way of those who want to move fast and break things such as academic freedom and shared governance.
The Florida university system was the first to join the new group. I can only assume that as boards begin to meet for the academic year, other states that initially expressed interest like mine in Georgia will officially join. And soon thereafter comes a director and board members. From there the business plan suggests six schools in those states as its first clients.
The only obstacle may be the price tag. That business plan says each founding state will give $4 million or equal labor to get the effort off the ground and into a future where it can rely on accreditation fees. It may take up to two years for the new group to get federal recognition and the prize of federal funding for its accredited schools. But the pieces will be put in place this fall. The time for faculty to act is now.
This is why I am calling on all faculty senates in public colleges across the South (and beyond) to pass resolutions disapproving of the new group and urging its administration and overseers at all levels not to join.
This kind of effort must be networked and done with speed. Fortunately for traditionally slow moving senates we have a model of a quickly developing process in the Mutual Defense Compact that flew through this spring in mainly Big Ten schools. There must be SEC and ACC and Big Twelve versions.
I took the liberty of revising that initial resolution for this new use. Feel free to revise and use as you see fit:
Faculty Statement Against Political Power Grab of Accreditation
WHEREAS recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education, including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech;
WHEREAS state governments across the South and aligned political actors at the federal level have targeted the independence of institutional accreditation with legal, financial, and political incursion designed to undermine the accrediation process and exert improper control over academic administration;
WHEREAS these state governments have routinely undermined faculty governance and academic freedom with state laws and policies;
WHEREAS these same state governments will choose the board members of the Commission for Public Higher Education and that board will chose a director, offices that will direct the commission;
WHEREAS these same state governments will financially invest in the commission up to $4 million;
WHEREAS that money and influence will corrupt the independent accreditation process and allow states to steer colleges and universities toward policies, curriculum, hiring standards, and institutional benchmarks that will undermine higher education’s role in our democracy;
THEREFORE, be it RESOLVED that this faculty senate urges the administration of this school and its state higher education system leaders to formally declare it won’t become a client of the commission as long as it is overseen by state governments.
Matthew Boedy is president of the Georgia AAUP. He can be reached on X/Twitter and Bluesky.
We have now arrived at a strange moment in the history of rhetoric: the search for a meta-discourse that can convince audiences who don’t care about reasoned argumentation. The resolution transcribed in this column is all well and good, indeed laudable, but the sad fact is that those whom it is attempting to persuade don’t want to be persuaded or don’t even recognize persuasion as a worthwhile exercise. Faculty need to think of actions (rather than words) that will make the point–say, for example, staging a protest at the entry gates of an SEC football game or staging a mass sick-out on the first day of the semester.
Rhetoric comes in many forms. Sadly most of us would be fired for a mass sick out. And the audience for the accreditation group yes you are right are well past persuasion. And the game goers will care less. But there is still room for mass movements I think
I agree that these plans are a terrible waste of money and propose dangerous new accreditors that could be used to impose political control or certify fake colleges. But I don’t agree that the existing system protects academic freedom and shared governance. I’ve never seen any evidence that accreditation helps support academic freedom and shared governance, and in a few cases (as Hank Reichman noted here about San Francisco’s City College), accreditors have endangered it, https://academeblog.org/2021/05/18/fighting-for-a-colleges-survival-interview-with-the-authors-of-free-city/.
I am well aware here in Georgia of the sins of SACS as it didn’t support AAUP censure and moves against USG’s bad tenure policies. SACS has academic freedom at least mentioned in its principles. But of course faculty rights are hard to find. In any case, the new group is worse as far as I can tell.
Thanks for pointing this out and coming up with the resolution! Sadly, while senates can pass mutual defense contracts, presidents can also refuse to sign on or endorse them. This is the situation we’re currently in at Minnesota, which has faculty extremely frustrated with administrative leadership. Mass movement tactics seem the only viable option for faculty at this point.