We are posting this March 21 letter from the executive committee of the University of Virginia AAUP chapter with the chapter’s permission. James Ryan, UVa President Ian Baucom, UVa Provost Deans, UVa Schools Michael Kennedy, Chair Faculty Senate Amanda Flora, Chair General Faculty Council Dear Colleagues, The University of Virginia (UVa) Chapter of the American…
BY MARK S. JAMES Last August, my colleague wrote about how our university’s leadership has embraced a top-down corporate model as the way of running the university, and he proceeded to describe various instances when they have ignored shared governance and threatened academic freedom. This trend has continued unabated. The most recent example of this…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY This week I am heading to Baton Rouge to speak to our AAUP colleagues in the Pelican State. My message to be developed in my keynote for the state conference meeting will be: no one is coming to save us and so we have to do much more to save ourselves. I…
BY THE GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER From donor influence scandals to Supreme Court boondoggles, there’s never a dull moment at George Mason University (GMU). Now, once again, Mason students and faculty find themselves under attack. This time, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin and his political appointees on Mason’s Board of Visitors are coming for our…
BY JONATHAN REES I read the AAUP’s Redbook from back to front. What I mean by that is that when a problem comes up, I ask myself, “I wonder what the AAUP has to say about this?” then search the index of the Redbook in order to see the collective wisdom of 110-odd years of…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL At a moment when the Israeli assault on Gaza has destroyed every university that had existed in Gaza, and the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement again calls on academics outside of Palestine to support the nonviolent strategy of institutional academic boycotts, it is time for the AAUP to reconsider…
BY MEGAN DELANEY, GABRIELLE HACKENBERG, AND AMANDA STOJANOV The Faculty Association of Monmouth University (FAMCO) recently finished an extensive reopener with university administration regarding our healthcare costs and plans. We were aware that our members had been overpaying for healthcare for several years and that the administration was diverting costs onto members through the cover…
BY BILL V. MULLEN A dangerous and broadly worded bill making faculty vulnerable to termination for not conforming to a state legislature’s definition of political diversity will likely be voted on by the Indiana state legislature on Tuesday, February 27th. Senate Bill 202 mandates that in order to receive tenure faculty must demonstrate that they…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday, February 26, I’ll be talking about the AAUP’s recent special investigation report, “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System,” online with John A. Douglass of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. Here’s the Center’s description of the event: In their self-proclaimed “war on…
BY NEIL KRAUS “The public has lost confidence in higher education.” This narrative is everywhere, its ubiquity reminiscent of the failing K–12 schools refrain post–A Nation at Risk. News stories about polling results, opinion pieces advocating increased online education, and consultants seeking to sell a wide range of products remind us of the public’s declining…