BY JOERG TIEDE Last month, the Board of Directors of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) issued a statement on shared governance. The statement delineates four principles “to help guide boards and those who work with them to achieve and support healthy and high-functioning shared governance”: Boards should commit to ensuring a broad…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE In a victory for academic freedom, the administration of Trinity College in Connecticut acknowledged today that Professor Johnny Williams’s social media posts “were protected by academic freedom and did not violate Trinity College policies.” The administration’s statement observed that “Our understanding of academic freedom in America today is rooted largely in a…
By JOERG TIEDE The following petition is being circulated by the AAUP. Sign to stand against threats and harassment. We are dismayed that another faculty member, Johnny Eric Williams of Trinity College, has become the target of a flood of threats following reports about his social media postings by the right-wing media outlet Campus Reform. In…
POSTED BY JOERG TIEDE The following resolution was adopted by the Fifty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors on April 17, 1971. Misconceptions of tenure are commonplace. For many groups and individuals tenure has become a conveniently simple explanation for what they perceive as a variety of educational ills. Tenure is not the…
BY JOERG TIEDE If teachers do not stand fighting in the front rank for freedom of intelligence, the cause of the latter is well-nigh hopeless, and we are in for that period of intimidation, oppression, and suppression that goes, and goes rightly, by the name of Fascism and Nazi-ism. — John Dewey, 1935 The American Association of…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE Anton Julius Carlson served as AAUP president from 1936 to 1938. He was once described by another former AAUP president as the Association’s “war horse” of that period of time, serving on Committee B on Freedom of Speech and on a total of four investigative committees between 1930 and 1941. Carlson chaired the famous…
BY JOERG TIEDE The recent creation of the Professor Watchlist was met by a number of responses. Among those is the open letter circulated by the AAUP, inviting faculty to stand in solidarity with their colleagues and add their names to the Professor Watchlist. As of this posting, almost 12,000 individuals have signed on. In addition to shows of…
BY JOERG TIEDE In 1934, conservative political activist Elizabeth Dilling published The Red Network—A Who’s Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots. The book enumerated over 460 “radical” organizations and some 1,300 individuals who were members or sympathizers. Among the organizations listed were the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Civil Liberties Union. The latter…
BY JOERG TIEDE Quincy Wright (1890-1970) served as the 20th president of the AAUP from 1944 to 1946. At the time of his election to the presidency, Wright had already served for almost two decades on Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and he would continue to serve on the committee for another decade.…
BY JOERG TIEDE Women professors were among the charter members at the AAUP’s founding, although their numbers in the early history of the Association are hard to reconstruct. In 1917 Vassar College professor Lucy Salmon was elected as the first woman member of council, and in 1925 Wellesley College professor Mary Calkins was the first woman…