2021 AAUP Updates

Matthew Finkin remembers Marty Lapidus, who died on May 27 at the age of eighty.

The governing Council of the AAUP voted to add Canisius College (NY), Keuka College (NY), Marian University (WI), Medaille College (NY), National University (CA), and Wittenberg University (OH) to the AAUP’s list of sanctioned institutions. The Council also voted to remove Bastyr University from the AAUP’s list of censured administrations.

A new AAUP report on data from the first national survey about shared governance in two decades focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on governance. Analyzing the results of a questionnaire completed by faculty governance leaders, it documents both the ways in which academic governance has been under severe pressure during the pandemic and an increase in faculty influence at some institutions.

At a time when bills seeking to suppress teaching about race, oppression, and gender are proliferating in the states, the unrebutted assumption must be that the board was motivated by concerns about Hannah-Jones's work on the New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning "1619 Project" and that its intervention was therefore not only inappropriate but racist and blatantly political, linked to a wider attack on teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.

Many institutions faced dire challenges in the 2020–21 academic year; for some, the pandemic exacerbated long-festering conditions. We found that, at other institutions, governing boards and administrations opportunistically exploited the pandemic, using it as an excuse to put aside established academic governance processes and unilaterally close programs and lay off faculty members

The AAUP is launching investigations into the dismissals of one faculty member at Linfield University and two faculty members at Collin College. In all cases, the faculty members were dismissed without due process and for reasons that appear to have violated their academic freedom.

After a strike lasting more than a week, faculty in the Oregon Tech AAUP chapter reached a tentative agreement with the administration early this morning.

The revelation that the Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania have been keeping and using human remains recovered from the 1985 police bombing of the Black liberation group MOVE is deeply troubling. We call on faculty and academic staff in disciplines that involve using human remains in research and teaching to work with their institutions and disciplinary associations to ensure that they are following disciplinary standards, institutional regulations, and current law.