BY HANK REICHMAN Today, May 22, two hundred tenured faculty members at the University of Southern California (USC) released an open letter to the school’s board of trustees calling for the resignation of university President C. L. Max Nikias, saying he had “lost the moral authority to lead” in the wake of revelations that a…
BY SANDIE GRAVETT AND STELLA ANDERSON Last week, we formally launched our study Faculty Employment Rights and Hearing Procedures in Public Non-Union Universities by emailing a survey link to faculty members on the higher education campuses in the constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina. These 16 higher education campuses provide an excellent test…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The case of Jay Smith, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor whose course on college athletics was quashed by university administrators, has received considerable attention because it raises serious questions about academic freedom. Yet, as recent events attest, the case is also important on shared governance grounds. Specifically, it…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ When I joined the George Mason University faculty in 2013, I had already had a taste of what could be achieved when faculty, students, community members, and organizations work together in common cause. Earlier in my career, I helped organize a faculty union at Montana State University and, in my community-based work…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows are the opening paragraphs of a news report for the Associated Press written by Matthew Barakat: Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents. The…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE The AAUP today wrote to the governing board of the Maricopa Community College District in Arizona to convey our concern over apparent departures from generally accepted principles of academic governance. The matter stems from a February resolution of the governing board that terminated a “meet-and-confer” provision of the faculty policy manual and…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik has reported on how an “Unusual Donor Agreement at UNLV Raises Questions about Fund-Raising and Governance”: Len Jessup is on his way out as president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, after receiving unfavorable reviews from the system chancellor and clashing with…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following is from a news story in the Arizona Republic: A bill to fundamentally restructure how Arizona’s three state universities are managed passed an Arizona Senate committee Monday as a fast-tracked proposal that won’t receive much public input. Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, wants to effectively dismantle the Arizona Board…
BY NICHOLAS FLEISHER The following is reposted with permission from the LanguagePolitics blog of Nicholas Fleisher, associate professor of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an active member of the AAUP. For previous discussions on the Academe blog of recent events in the University of Wisconsin system see here and here. UW-Stevens Point has…
BY THE TENNESSEE TECH UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The Tennessee Tech University chapter of the AAUP passed the following resolution yesterday about a controversy concerning allegations of research misconduct and conflict of interest. WHEREAS a chief purpose of AAUP has always been the protection of shared governance, which requires academic matters in the university to be…