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 MICHAEL MERANZE The following post by UCLA history professor Michael Meranze is reposted by permission from the Remaking the University blog that he runs along with UC Santa Barbara professor Christopher Newfield. As you may recall, a bill to eliminate tenure was recently introduced into the Iowa State Senate. After a good deal of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is taken from an op-ed piece, “Top 10 ways tenure benefits students and all Iowa residents,” by Katherine Tachau and Lois Cox of the University of Iowa AAUP chapter, published yesterday in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The University of Iowa chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)…
BY HANK REICHMAN This month saw what the AAUP quickly labeled “A Concerted Attack on Academic Freedom” in Iowa and Missouri, as well as a boneheaded bill introduced in Arizona that would have banned discussions of “social justice” at the state’s public colleges and universities. But after faculty members and higher ed leaders pushed back,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued today by the AAUP: Legislators in Missouri and Iowa have introduced legislation that would eliminate tenure for faculty at public institutions in these states. In Missouri, the awarding of tenure would be outlawed for all faculty hired after 2017. In Iowa, tenure would be eliminated even…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is from the “Capital Roundup for January 12, written by Lee Gazette for the Des Moines Register: “A state senator again has filed a bill seeking to end the tenure system at Iowa’s three state universities. Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, has filed the bill before, but this year Senate File…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE Just about 18 months after ending up on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is once again in the news. Many readers of this blog will recall that the center’s embattled president, Dr. Ronald DePinho, figured prominently in the April 2015 report produced by…
BY HANK REICHMAN Is a faculty handbook a legally binding contract? The question is not an easy one to answer, as the law may vary from state to state. In 2015 the AAUP’s legal department updated its Faculty Handbooks Guide, which includes basic information for each state, although the Guide “is not exhaustive and is…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the California Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling in the teacher tenure case, Vergara v. California, bringing to a close an effort by so-called school reformers to challenge tenure and other rights of K-12 teachers protected by state law. The Vergara litigation was closely watched across the country as a test…
BY HANK REICHMAN Alarmed by the headline? I was when I encountered it above an article originally published in the online zine Salon, but republished in several other locations (for instance here). Written by Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California Adrianna Kezar, co-director of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty…