2022 AAUP Updates

The selection of a new president by the board of trustees following a closed and unannounced process makes Purdue an outlier among doctoral institutions.

The governing Council of the AAUP voted unanimously today to pass a joint resolution condemning the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and System Office for multiple violations of widely accepted standards of shared governance and academic freedom and for a sustained climate of institutional racism. It also censured Linfield University and removed St. Edward’s University from the Association’s list of censured administrations.

The AAUP is proud to announce the recipients of the Georgina M. Smith Award, the Marilyn Sternberg Award, and the Outstanding Achievement Award.

Today, the AAUP released the 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices, the first survey of its kind since 2004. The findings offer a snapshot of prevailing tenure practices and policies at four-year institutions with tenure systems.

Today the AAUP released a report of the Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina system. The report considers the influence of the North Carolina state legislature on the systemwide board of governors and campus boards of trustees. It discusses how political pressure and top-down leadership have obstructed meaningful faculty participation in the UNC system, jeopardized academic freedom, and reinforced institutional racism.

We note with sadness the death of former AAUP general counsel Michael A. Olivas at the age of seventy-one. Current general counsel Risa Lieberwitz described him as "deeply committed to the AAUP and the principles of academic freedom and shared governance."

Continuing a relentless crusade to destroy higher education in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis staged a performative and disingenuous press conference on April 19 at which he signed into law Senate Bill 7044, further attacking professors and eroding academic freedom in the state.

The AAUP released the report of an investigating committee on the dismissal of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured English professor and endowed chair in Shakespeare studies at Linfield University in Oregon. The report finds that Linfield’s administration violated AAUP standards and the institution’s own regulations when it dismissed Pollack-Pelzner without affordance of academic due process.