The American conception of academic freedom arose with the Progressive Era in the 1890s primarily because of social scientists who advocated for reforms that negatively affected financial interests. The press – muckrakers and establishment papers – actively participated in the debate over academic freedom that took place during that time. The attention of the press sometimes helped professors…
Before 1915, AAUP founders Arthur Lovejoy and James McKeen Cattell stressed the need for significant reform of the traditional mode of governance prevalent in US higher education. Both proposed to have the president be elected by the faculty and to reduce the power of governing boards. Lovejoy proposed that reforming governance be the main focus of the soon-to-be-founded Association, because it would…
(Courtesy of Stanford University Archives) Stanford engineering professor Guido Marx (1871-1949) was a member of the committee that organized the founding meeting of the AAUP. Between 1915 and 1919, he served on the Council and on two committees related to membership. He also served on the first investigation of the University of Montana in 1915.…
(John M. Mecklin, ca. 1940, Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library) That the AAUP made academic freedom its early focus, which happened largely by accident rather than design, was due to events surrounding its founding. If there was one academic freedom case before the founding that was specifically responsible for setting the course of the Association,…
Much of the credit for the survival and success of the early AAUP belongs to its long-serving secretary, the MIT mathematician Harry Walter Tyler (1863-1938). Tyler served as secretary from 1916 to 1930 and, after his retirement from MIT and with the establishment of the new office, as general secretary from 1930 to 1933 and from 1935…
One of the less-frequently mentioned founders of the AAUP is Columbia University psychologist James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944). Cattell was perhaps the most prominent academic gadfly of his time. He publicly called for the creation of the Association in 1912 and helped organize its founding, but never played a role in its leadership. As editor of Science…
The first call for a meeting to discuss the founding of the AAUP was organized by Arthur O. Lovejoy at Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 1913. It was signed by “most of the full professors” at the institution and sent to the faculties of nine other universities. While several historical documents were published…
With Academe magazine now in its hundredth volume, it seems an appropriate time to look back on the history of the AAUP’s periodicals. The AAUP was founded in January 1915 and published the first Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, which included what is now called the Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom…
Several reports of the AAUP’s founding mention that it took place in the Chemists’ Club in New York. While there is a website by the current Chemists’ Club, it moved its location and sold the building in which the founding took place. I was able to locate information about the original location of the Chemists’ Club, which is…