BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU In the past several years, Linfield University in Oregon has gained a reputation for creating a hostile work environment. One reason is that it has displayed a willingness to harass and even fire tenured faculty who are willing to point out its failures in key areas like sexual harassment, faculty governance, and…
BY DEBORAH BELL, SUSAN DENNISON, SPOMA JOVANOVIC, JESSICA NAVARRO, AND JONATHAN TUDGE As colleges and universities address myriad crises—including enrollment declines, operating changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions about the value of a college degree, and the need to mitigate racial tensions on campus—higher education budgets have come under increasing scrutiny, and talk…
BY MARK JAMES A year ago, I was called in to meet with my dean after a parent complained to the president’s office that I had been discussing white supremacy in my American and African American literature classes. I wrote about that experience last summer in Inside Higher Ed, and I hoped that would be…
BY MARTHA MCCAUGHEY AND SCOTT WELSH In the fall 2021 issue of Academe we describe the problem of a “shadow curriculum” in the form of student-affairs programming that (re)shapes students’ education on campus, encroaching on the faculty’s role in governance of courses and curriculum. From our perspective as faculty members guided by AAUP principles, such…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE On October 14, the AAUP released its third report on data collected from this year’s Shared Governance Survey as part of a special issue of Academe dedicated to governance. This report focuses on responses to questions about the composition of senates and similar faculty governance bodies and the conduct of presidential searches, as well as findings…
BY THE AAUP Fall 2021 | Vol. 107, No. 4 The fall 2021 issue of Academe surveys the present state of academic governance. It includes a new report on findings of the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, firsthand accounts of governance struggles on campuses around the country, and a pair of articles that confront the threat posed…
BY ALEX ZUKAS In a recent Academe Blog post, Eva Cherniavsky wrote, “As we enter a fourth decade of life in the neoliberal university, where permanent austerity rules everywhere except in the swelling ranks of upper administration; where the pretense of shared governance has all but collapsed; where tenure lines are vanishing (particularly in the…
BY AMIT BAISHYA AND JULIE ANN WARD “OU Days of Action” was organized on September 20 and 21 to coincide with the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents Meeting. This action was the culmination of a months-long process of appealing to OU’s upper administration to adopt basic, common-sense policies of COVID-19 mitigation, with little to…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE It’s a mixed picture when it comes to shared governance faculty roles in decision-making areas at four-year institutions of higher education. Today we released a second report on data collected from the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, the first national survey on shared governance since 2001. Key findings include: In several areas in…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MILWAUKEE AAUP As faculty, staff, and students prepare to return to a newly re-opened campus this fall, UWM AAUP reminds us of the centrality of academic freedom and democratic governance in ensuring our collective safety and public health. The Covid-19 pandemic is not over. Faculty, staff, and students must be free…