BY MATTHEW BOEDY When the AAUP made funds available to all state conferences last year, I, as the state president of the Georgia conference, had an idea. This academic year we have had six presidents in our state’s public higher education system, which includes twenty-six institutions, announce that they were leaving. When we received word…
BY CATHERINE E. SAUNDERS, VIRGINIA HOY, AND DEBORAH M. SÁNCHEZ This is the third in a series of three George Mason-AAUP Academe Blog posts on lessons learned from the presidential search campaign. Read the first posts on GMU’s campaign and the costs of secret presidential searches here and here. The trend toward increasing secrecy in…
BY BETHANY L. LETIECQ AND JUDITH A. WILDE This is the second in a series of three George Mason-AAUP Academe Blog posts on lessons learned from the presidential search campaign. Read the first post on GMU’s campaign here. Over the past year, two of the Washington, DC, region’s largest public universities lost their presidents. The…
BY MARTIN KICH What follows is from an uncredited story published by the Northwest Florida Daily News: In a debate that has repeatedly flared in recent years, a House Republican on Monday proposed Sunshine Law exemptions for information about applicants for top jobs at state universities and colleges. “The proposal (HB 351), filed by Rep.…
The following resolution was approved unanimously by the Academic Senate, California State University (ASCSU) at its November 6 plenary meeting in Long Beach, California. On November 3, the AAUP issued its own Statement on Presidential Searches. ACADEMIC SENATE OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AS-3234-15/EX November 4-5, 2015 PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH PROCESS IN THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY…
The following statement was issued today by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP): In recent months at a number of colleges and universities across the country controversy has emerged over decisions by governing boards to conduct searches for new presidents or chancellors in secret, abandoning the previously standard practice of inviting a select group…
The decision last month of the Iowa Board of Regents to name former IBM senior vice president J. Bruce Harreld as the University of Iowa’s next president, despite widespread opposition to his candidacy among faculty and others, has brought renewed attention to presidential searches. This past weekend at the request of the UI AAUP chapter…
On Thursday, the Iowa Board of Regents unanimously appointed former IBM senior vice president J. Bruce Harreld as the University of Iowa’s next president. Harreld’s experience in higher education is limited to a few years as an adjunct business teacher, but the regents apparently selected him over three distinguished academic leaders for his alleged expertise…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ, TIM GIBSON, AND BETSY DEMULDER This is the first in a series of three George Mason-AAUP Academe Blog posts on lessons learned from the presidential search campaign. Presidential searches conducted at public universities have become secretive processes that exclude most if not all forms of public vetting and engagement. Historically, finalists for…
BY THE COMMITTEE ON COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE On November 1, following the announcement of current University of Wisconsin system president Ray Cross’s retirement, the president of the Board of Regents of the UW system appointed a nine-member presidential search committee. Breaking decades of institutional precedent, he did not include any faculty members on the…