Amid growing outrage among faculty about secretive presidential searches (see here and, for an AAUP statement, here), the College of Charleston in South Carolina recently appointed a new provost over complaints from faculty who say they were not consulted in the decision-making process, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. The position of provost, the institution’s…
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 is the text of a statement issued on November 5 by the AAUP: On July 20, the AAUP and AFT‐Wisconsin released a joint statement condemning the attacks on tenure and shared governance in higher education that the Wisconsin Legislature included in its annual budget and in Act 55, which Governor Scott Walker signed…
The following essay by Christopher Newfield, Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is reposted with permission from Chris’s and Michael Meranze’s Remaking the University blog. We’re many years now into the New Normal for public universities. We’ve known for a while that this means permanent budgetary austerity.…
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 following is an open letter from Professor Nancy Kendall to members of the University of Wisconsin at Madison Faculty Senate, which met today to consider a proposed new tenure and layoff policy in the wake of the passage in July of the infamous Act 55 removing tenure and shared governance protections from statute. In…
This is an op-ed written by John McNay, president of the Ohio Conference, and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Gov. John Kasich’s task force on affordability and efficiency in higher education released its recommendations to the General Assembly recently, and the results were to be expected. The task force was headed by Geoff Chatas,…
Recently we’ve seen a growing amount of attention paid to secret searches for university presidents and the appointment as a consequence of such searches of non-educators who may push a corporatizing agenda, including at the University of Iowa, Miami University, and the University of North Carolina. Last week David A. Sanders, Associate Professor of Biological…
Last month the Board of Regents of the University of California system debated a proposed “Statement of Principles on Intolerance” prompted by concerns about anti-Semitism on campus. The proposal attracted considerable criticism (see also here) and instead the board announced plans to have a task force come up with a new document articulating the system’s…
Last week, Marywood University’s student newspaper reported that the faculty had taken votes of no confidence in the university’s president and its vice president of business affairs and treasurer. With 135 of the 182 eligible faculty voting, the percentages who expressed no confidence were 71 and 88, respectively. The vote, which took place online between…