2021 AAUP Updates

South Carolina’s House Bill 4522 is misguided legislation that would do irreparable damage to the quality of education in the South Carolina public university system by severely undermining academic freedom in the state.

On Saturday, the governing Council of the AAUP voted to remove the University of Nebraska–Lincoln from the Association’s list of censured administrations, and to add Illinois Wesleyan University to the Association's list of institutions sanctioned for substantial noncompliance with standards of academic governance.

After 50,000 public comments from borrowers and an internal audit of borrowers eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the US Department of Education has taken a series of steps to resolve long-standing issues with the troubled program. Read more about these changes and how you can potentially access debt relief.

The Build Back Better Act funds essential financial aid programs, but fails to deliver on the reforms we need. It goes without saying that we are disappointed in these developments. 

New regulations have been proposed by the US Department of Education to recognize the difficulties faced by contingent faculty in their pursuit of PSLF; while they are a huge improvement from the current program, the proposed rules must go further to meet the needs of faculty. Art historian and Pennsylvania AAUP state conference president Jessica Sponsler offered comments to the rulemaking committee during their second week of negotiations.

UF’s decision constitutes an egregious violation of faculty members’ academic freedom and is almost certainly a violation of their free speech rights as citizens. The AAUP stands in solidarity with these scholars in accordance with our mission statement to advance academic freedom in American colleges and universities. We affirm their right to provide expert testimony and will provide whatever assistance we can to support them in their efforts.

The AAUP will conduct an investigation of the system after its board of regents voted to adopt a post-tenure review policy that makes it possible to fire a tenured faculty member without a dismissal hearing.

Yesterday, plaintiffs including the University of Oklahoma chapter of the AAUP filed a lawsuit challenging an Oklahoma law that severely restricts faculty at public institutions in the state from teaching about race and gender.