BY HANK REICHMAN Last week historian Garrett Felber reached a confidential settlement with the University of Mississippi, where in December 2020 his appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor was not renewed under abrupt and alarming circumstances. “I was terminated because of my public statements, including legitimate criticisms of the University. Rather than go to court…
BY NICOLE BRAUN A few weeks ago, I participated virtually in the very first Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform U.S. Higher Education. It was a fabulous, inspiring, stimulating and visionary experience. During the conference, we were put into small focus groups to explore the question of power, how to obtain power,…
BY MICHAEL THADDEUS A depressingly familiar trend in higher education has been the gradual erosion of ladder faculty positions and their replacement by positions with no prospect of tenure. The former tend to be relatively well-paid and secure; the latter, undervalued and marginal. Though it ranks among the richest American universities, my own institution, Columbia…
BY JULIA SCHLECK The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so…
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…
BY THE AAUP RESEARCH DEPARTMENT This is the second in a series of three blog posts on findings from the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. You can read the first post here. The steady rise of contingent faculty appointments and the growth of administration in higher education present a significant…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In the middle of the summer and in the middle of a pandemic, with an overwhelming majority of faculty and other community stakeholders voicing their objections to the plan and with few students weighing in on it, the Board of Governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) voted on…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of an op-ed piece published July 20, 2021 in the San Francisco Chronicle. From the nationwide spate of legislation targeting “critical race theory” to the recent controversy at Cal State East Bay, where crude and unscholarly claims about the “intelligence” of racial groups were included in an…
BY THE AAUP RESEARCH DEPARTMENT This is the first in a series of three blog posts on findings from the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. New data from an AAUP survey detail the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty salaries and fringe benefits for both tenure-line and non-tenure-track…