THE AAUP TRADITION:
A RETROSPECTIVE GUIDE TO ASSOCIATION POLICIES
The AAUP Tradition: A Retrospective Guide to Association Policies was written by Professor Norman Ferris in 1989. It has not been updated and is offered to readers for its obvious merits as a history of AAUP and an organizing manual but with the recognition that parts of The AAUP Tradition need to be revised. Readers are free to quote and reproduce The AAUP Tradition providing that full credit is given to Professor Ferris as the author of the work and that no one other than Professor Ferris shall profit from the publication or distribution of the work.
Professor Norman Ferris teaches diplomatic history at Middle Tennessee State University, and is past president of the Tennessee Conference of AAUP and former chair of the Assembly of State Conferences. Professor Ferris received the Sumberg Award for distinguished service to AAUP at the Annual Meeting in June, 1996.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Genesis of This Handbook
The Association: History and Role
- The Association: Structure
- Constitution
- Officers and Council
- Elections
- The Annual Meeting
- The Washington Office
- The Budget Process
- The Standing Committees
- Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
- How Committee A Works
- Committee B on Professional Ethics
- Committee C on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication
- Committee F on Chapters, Conferences, Members and Dues
- Committee H on the History of the Association
- Committee I on Association Investments
- Committee L on the Historically Black Institutions and the Status of Minorities in the Profession
- Committee N on Representation of Economic and Professional Interests
- Background
- The Association Factionalized
- Strikes
- Arbitration
- In Recent Years
- Bifurcation
- Yeshiva
- Current AAUP Collective Bargaining Policy
- Role and Functions of Committee N and the CBC
- Joint Ventures
- Committee O on Organization
- Committee R on Government Relations
- Committee T on College and University Government
- In General
- The Selection, Evaluation, and Retention of Administrators
- Institutional Budgeting
- Mergers, Absorptions, and Financial Exigency
- Faculty Representation on Governing Boards
- Higher Education Reform
- Committee V on Junior and Community Colleges
- Committee W on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession
- Background
- Affirmative Action
- Economic Benefits
- Other Anti-Discrimination Measures
- Non-Tenure Track and Part-Time Appointments
- Tenure Quotas
- Sexual Harassment
- Committee Z on the Economic Status of the Profession
- Chapters
- History and Functions of Chapters
- How To Form a Chapter
- Duties of Chapter Officers
- Other Relations with the National Office
- Chapter Rosters
- Further Responsibilities of Chapter Officers
- Chapter Activities
- Membership Development by Chapters
- Collateral Benefits
- Publications
- Government Relations
- Defense of Academic Freedom
- Categories and Conditions of Membership
- How To Recruit New Members
- Retaining Current Members
- The State Conferences
- Their History and Role in the AAUP
- Paying the Bills
- State Conference Committee Structure
- Executive Committee
- Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
- Committee F on Membership and Dues
- Assisting Chapters in Recruiting New Members
- Assisting Chapters in Retaining Members
- Committee R on Government Relations
- State Conference Meetings and Programs
- The Assembly of State Conferences
- ASC Meetings
- Employment Issues
- Workloads
- Entering and Leaving Employment
- Credit for Previous Service
- Job Interviews
- Ideology and Employment
- First Amendment Rights
- Political Participation
- The Status of Librarians
- Departmental and School Administration
- Renewing and Terminating Faculty Appointments
- Academic Freedom, Tenure and Due Process
- Academic Freedom
- Tenure
- Due Process
- Threats to Tenure
- The Locus of Tenure
- Termination of Tenure for "Curricular" Reasons"
- Tenure Quotas
- "Term Tenure"
- On Tenure in General
- The Rights of Probationary Faculty
- Academic Freedom of Students
- Evaluations of Professors
- Evaluations of Professors by Students
- "Assessment" of Faculty Performance
- On Evaluation of Tenured Faculty
- Church-Related Institutions
- Government Interference
- Corporate Relationships
- Outside Speakers
- Administrative Alterations in Faculty Working Conditions
- Litigation and Judicially Compelled Disclosure
- Faculty Access to Accrediting Bodies
- Misconceptions of Academic Freedom
INTRODUCTION
Colleagues and sometimes administrators consult AAUP chapter and conference leaders frequently as authorities on correct academic policies and procedures. At times they are asked to serve as informal ombudsmen. When speaking to faculty, administrative or legislative bodies, they encounter questions about AAUP standards and principles. They may also be expected to supply the knowledge necessary to cope with practical problems on campus.
This handbook is designed to assist AAUP representatives to meet the expectations and satisfy the demands depicted above. Based upon Association documents, it delineates not only faculty rights, privileges and responsibilities, but also many of the typical limitations and pitfalls of academic life. It describes both ideals and the realities that often circumscribe and obstruct the realization of those ideals.
A word of caution: although most of the statements contained in these pages reflect AAUP policies at the time of writing, some merely reflect the personal opinions of their authors, including the writer of this handbook. It is therefore highly recommended, before any decisive action is taken in the name of any AAUP unit, based on the content of this handbook, that an inquiry be made of the Association's Washington office, to confirm or clarify particular policies.
Much of information and advice provided in this handbook may appear unnecessary to AAUP veterans, but it was not written for them. Not infrequently recently enrolled members of the Association, possessing little knowledge of its traditions, practices and policies, assume leadership roles in chapters or conferences. Such novices, as this writer knows from personal experience, need a handbook such as this one. And the spectrum of issues and activities which are AAUP-related is so broad that the suggestions (if not always definitive answers) supplied in this volume may furnish enlightenment.
Among it many roles the American Association of University Professors is a vehicle for a body of academic traditions. The Association has developed its precepts and policies through a methodical process of deliberate fact-gathering analysis, debate and refinement. After three quarters of a century, the precedents of the past evolved into the precepts of the present. To understand them and adequately interpret them to others requires some understanding of how they were developed. In elucidating Association policies, therefore, this handbook attempts to convey something of their background, including discussions which preceded their enactment, to illuminate their rationale.
Most of the sources used in producing this handbook are AAUP publications and internal documents. (Readers wishing to pursue topics into the scholarly and general literature may find aids to further investigation in the citations which have been, wherever feasible, inserted directly into the text for ease of use.) Leading AAUP publications are cited as follows: the volume of AAUP Policy Documents and Reports is universally known as the Redbook. Page references are from the 1990 edition. The AAUP Bulletin, published through 1978, is cited as "B." And Academe, the journal of the Association since 1978, is cited as "A." Hence the citation of (B, 2-77, p. 35-36) would refer to pages 35 and 36 of the February 1977 issue of the AAUP Bulletin. Also cited frequently is The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is designated in these pages as "C."
This volume should be employed as a reference work. When a question is asked or a problem arises, a chapter or conference leader should first consult the index to see whether a key word points the way to an elucidation or a solution. Many of the issues treated herein are dealt with in the context of a discussion of the responsibilities of particular AAUP standing committee having jurisdiction over the matter.
The looseleaf format is employed so that alterations or additions to AAUP policy, or discussions of additional topics, can be conveniently added in a timely manner. A peculiar numbering system is employed for the various sections for the same reason. Chapter and conference leaders may remove and photocopy individual pages in order to supply them to AAUP members making inquires. And users who do not have ready access to back copies of Academe or the AAUP Bulletin cited in this work may obtain for study or follow up purposes the appropriate pages from those journals by requesting photocopies from AAUP sources which have them.
The composition of this handbook has taken hundreds of hours extended over several years. Although prominent members of the AAUP, both professors and Washington staff personnel, have been consulted as the writing proceeded, the author assumes the responsibility for all inanities, inaccuracies, redundancies, and homilies that may have crept into the text. In the hope that revisions may produce considerable improvement in future years, the writer solicits constructive criticism and suggestions for coverage of additional topics.
Norman Ferris
Middle Tennessee State University
March 17, 1990
GENESIS OF THIS HANDBOOK
The American Association of University Professors exists to promote cooperation among and to advance the standards, values, and welfare of professors and research scholars in higher education in the United States. Chapters of the AAUP are found on many campuses, and state conferences harmonize the work of the chapters and promote the interests of members in states where such organizations are active. Because both varieties of faculty groups frequently elect officers who are relatively inexperienced in the work of the Association, the publication of a "leadership handbook" to assist them in understanding and carrying out their duties has long been considered a virtual necessity. A fiftieth anniversary self-study report, for example, recommended in 1965 that the Association publish such a guide. And a report from a special committee on non-tenured faculty, distributed at the 58th Annual Meeting, recommended "that chapter officers be provided with...a handbook...written in dignified journalistic prose,...containing abstracts of basic AAUP policy statements for ready reference. Such a handbook would...supply essential information which now has to be gleaned from texts of other Association documents." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1972, p. 159.)
By 1973 a draft of a handbook circulated for comment, but work on it afterwards languished. In 1985, however, the Assembly of State Conferences urged that a high priority be given to the task of completing the desired volume. With the approval of the Council and the officers of the Association, the writer, who was then serving as Chair of the ASC, undertook to produce such a manual.
THE ASSOCIATION: HISTORY AND ROLE
The American Association of University Professors was founded in 1915 by a coterie of distinguished scholars who were concerned about threats to academic freedom amid the repressive chauvinism of the World War I era. Charter members numbering 867 adopted a statement of principles and formed committees to promulgate standards of academic freedom and professional ethics. For almost two decades faculty participation in the AAUP grew steadily until 1934. After two years of slight decline, as academia felt the impact of the great depression, membership in the AAUP once more increased annually (the only exception being the war year of 1943) until 1956. In that year a leadership crisis culminated in the loss of over six thousand members, a deficiency which was not overcome until the year 1962, when membership exceeded 49,000.
Climbing steadily to 88,000 in 1967, membership peaked at 91,000 in 1972, and then fell to the 75,000-72,000 range during the period 1978-1984, and near 50,000 thereafter. Factors that contributed to membership loss included the advent of collective bargaining in higher education, the growing tendency of professors to narrow their activities and limit their loyalties to their own scholarly specialties, and the emergence of faculty governance bodies such as faculty senates.
From its beginning, the AAUP vigorously defended academic freedom, and the major accomplishment of the Association has been the formulation of a body of "academic common law" which forms the principal bulwark of that special status for professors. The idea of a university as an inviolable refuge for free inquiry, as propounded by the framers of the 1915 AAUP Declaration of Principles, as well as the concept of tenure to secure freedom from unwarranted external interference in teaching and research, and the principle of collective faculty responsibility for educational decisions, particularly those relating to curriculum and personnel matters, all owe their existence largely to more than seventy years of vigilant and determined labor by the Association. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the survival in practice of these concepts at many institutions should the salubrious influence of the AAUP ever weaken or disappear.
Although support for the Association is evident everywhere within the professorate, it is unfortunate that only a small proportion of the total number of higher education faculty members remain dedicated to the preservation of AAUP principles, continue to pay Association dues, and keep the local chapters, state conferences, and the national components of the Association functioning.
THE ASSOCIATION: STRUCTURE
Constitution
The foundation of the AAUP is its Constitution. That document is printed on pages 185-89 of the Redbook. (Amendments passed at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the Association regarding the service on the Council of past presidents may be found on page 5a of the September-October 1985 issue of Academe.)
That document state the purpose of the organization, specifies classes of and requirements for membership, delineates the duties of national officers and the Council, sets forth rules for the election of these leaders, provides for the conduct of meetings thereto, regulates the formation and work of local chapters, state conferences, and the Collective Bargaining Congress, and declares how amendments may be achieved.
Officers and Council
The national officers of the AAUP, elected every two years by its active members, are the President, first and second Vice Presidents, and a Secretary-Treasurer. An Executive Committee of the Council, composed of these four officers, the immediate past President of the Association, the Chairs of the Assembly of State Conferences and the Collective Bargaining Congress, and (in current practice) four other members of the Council, meets four times a year to discuss and formulate proposals, such as budget priorities and expenditures, for action by the Council.
The Council is the governing board of the Association. It ordinarily has thirty-nine members--the four national officers, the ASC Chair, the CBC Chair, the immediate past presidents of the CBC and ASC, three past Presidents of the Association, and thirty representatives elected for three-year terms from ten districts. Redistricting takes place not less frequently than every ten years.
The Council ordinarily meets for two or three days in June at the time of the Annual Meeting of the Association and for two more days in November. Its principal responsibilities are to manage the Association's funds and property and set membership dues; to Assistant Treasurer, professional staff, and other national AAUP employees; to determine time and place and publish records of Association meetings; to establish committees and regional offices as needed; to arrange periodically to redistrict itself; and to construe the Constitution.
Council members are non-voting ex officio members of the governing boards of all state conferences with their districts and must be informed in a timely manner of conference business. They act as intermediaries between conferences, chapters, and individual members on the one hand, and the Council on the other.
Council meeting vary structurally but in general they follow a pattern that appears at least partly set by precedent and is to some degree governed by the sequence of decisions made at preceding executive committee meetings. The Council will also deliberate on measures referred to it by Annual Meeting and will act on committee reports that it has commissioned. A typical Council agenda features reports by the President, General Secretary, Secretary-Treasurer, General Counsel, and Committees A, R, F, and T. It also normally includes reports on the subject of professional negotiations by Committee N, the Chair of the CBC, and sometimes the Director of Collective Bargaining, as well as reports by the chair of the ASC and the editor of Academe. Matters that members have requested brought to Council for action are usually treated under "Other Business."
Reports of Committees W, Z, O, I, B, C, H, V, advisory boards and panels, the Grievance and Litigation Committees, the AAUP Foundation, special task forces, and ad hoc committees are received periodically and action taken on them as seems advisable. Narrative minutes of Council meetings appear in a following issue of Academe. Prior to the June Council meeting it is customary to have a brief orientation session for new officers and Council members, and at the session following the Annual Meeting of the Association any proposals emanating from that body are considered.
Elections
The procedures for the elections of national officers and Council members are set forth in Article V of the Constitution. Although there is no requirement for the national nominating committee to present slates reflecting a variety of types of institutions and professional fields, or to offer candidates of varying ages and both sexes, it has long been the custom to give attention to these considerations, to insure that the Council and national officers represent the diversity of membership in the AAUP. A discussion of the nominating committee functions, as well as comments on Council activities, is in the May 1965 issue of the AAUP Bulletin, pages 125-28. The reader will note one important change has since occurred: Council members are no longer elected by the Association membership at large but only by members in their respective districts.
Current nominating procedures are as follows. In June the President obtains Council approval of a nominating committee. The committee meets in September (in odd-numbered years) to prepare slates of prospective officers and Council members, and publishes its report in the first issue of Academe for the following year. Petitions are accepted until March 15. Ballots are distributed by mail between April 1 and May 31, must returned with a postmark of May 31 or earlier, and are counted on June 10. (See Academe of May-June 1983, page 64.)
Elections of national officers, including the Chairs of the ASC and the CBC, and of Council members, are governed not only by Article V of the Constitution but also by-laws. These by-laws must be followed by those persons conducting or participating in such elections.
The Annual Meeting
The Annual Meeting of the Association is the final authority for both amendments to the Constitution (as set forth in Article X of that document) and actions that either it or the Council may propose, which shall become official Association policy upon the concurrence of the other party to the transaction, or (irrespective of adverse Council action) upon approval by two successive Annual Meetings of the Association. Moreover, the Annual Meeting has the power to instruct the Council to report to the next meeting of the larger body "on subjects within the province of the Association," and unilaterally "to express its views on professional matters."
The President of the Association or a designated representative presides over Annual Meetings of the Association. Roberts' Rules of Order Revised govern proceedings. Each state conference may elect two delegates and the active members of each chapter may elect one delegate for each twenty-five members or fraction thereof to the institution. Only delegates may vote at Annual Meetings, although all Association members are welcome to attend. The rules for proportional voting by chapter delegates only, under certain circumstances, are set forth in Article VI, section 3, of the Constitution.
Annual meeting attendance has dropped considerably since travel subsidies for delegates, offered during the 1960s and 1970s, ceased. Stronger efforts should be made by chapters and conferences to achieve representation at these meetings by partial funding of delegate travel expenses. Members of the Council and official participants in authorized committee meetings have their expenses paid in part or wholly by the Association, and some delegates who are officers of the ASC and the CBC or participants in their meetings have expenses defrayed by those organizations. But members willing and able to represent chapters if they were not required to pay their entire expense should be supported financially by their colleagues to the largest degree possible. Benefits of participation in an Annual Meeting, including personal contact with Association officers and staff members, first-hand observation of its essential business being conducted, and camaraderie and exchanges of information with members from other parts of the nation, are important in maintaining continuity of participation in the organization's affairs and in heightening understanding at the chapter level of its goals and principles.
Traditionally, Annual Meetings have lasted two days. Certain committee meetings, especially those of Committee A, generally occur early in the week. When an Annual Meeting is held in Washington, a "government relations" day involves Capitol Hill visits, workshops, panels and seminars. The ASC and CBC generally hold their meetings during the two days before the Annual Meeting, while Executive Committee and Council meetings are also held beforehand. Panel discussions and other special programs for AAUP members not involved in the aforementioned preliminary meetings are usually provided. A CBC-sponsored dinner, a Committee W-sponsored luncheon, and a banquet with a preceding reception and a distinguished speaker have become customary events during Annual Meeting week. Care is now being taken to insure that members of the Council and its Executive Committee who also desire to participate in the business of the ASC and/or CBC are not prevented by scheduling conflicts.
An AAUP self-survey committee observed in 1965 that Annual Meetings had lately been giving "relatively little attention to matters of general professional, educational, and intellectual character," but had instead "been almost entirely occupied with the business of the Association," dealing with "reports, resolutions, and other matters of business." These meetings were quite different from those "of the various learned societies, which are primarily for the purpose of intellectual and scholarly interchange." But the current format, the self-survey concluded, was probably unavoidable, since significant attendance at a more prolonged meeting was difficult to imagine, and the Association's business usually consumed most of the time allocated to the Annual Meeting. The quality of that business, and the manner of conducting it, would reveal the intellectual if not the scholarly resources of the Association.
Agendas of Annual Meetings typically include the following matters of business. The chair of the agenda committee (composed of a vice president, the Chair of the ASC, and one additional Council member) recommends adoption of the printed agenda and the standing rules for the meeting. (Thereafter the Agenda committee decides, acting as final authority, whether any proposed resolutions rejected by the Resolutions Committee, and then appealed by their proponents to the Annual Meeting, shall be brought before the latter body. It also has the duty to "facilitate the orderly consideration" of proposals relating to the internal organization of the Association or the conduct of its activities, and to "make an equitable apportionment of available time for discussion and a vote on proposals." There is a May 1 deadline for the receipt of proposals.)
As with Council meetings, the Annual Meetings continue with reports by the President, the General Secretary, the Secretary-Treasurer, the General Counsel, the major standing committees (with votes on Committee A recommendations for the imposition or removal of censure), the Chairs of the ASC and the CBC and the resolutions committee. Additionally, various awards are presented, distinguished visitors are recognized, and every two years the retiring President gives an address.
The President of the AAUP appoints a committee to receive and prepare resolutions to be presented to the Annual Meeting for action. Following ratification of their appointments at the November Council meeting, the (usually three) members of the Resolutions Committee meet immediately prior to the Annual Meeting to consider all proposed resolutions and to submit those they deem suitable (with or without modifications) to the plenary body. They may also submit resolutions of their own. Resolutions in this context are defined as "expressions of opinion..., not constituting legislative action of the Association," and relate to "subjects of general interest to the academic profession and the public." Members, chapters and conferences may initiate resolutions, but they must reach the Resolutions Committee by May 1, unless in rare cases they concern topics which have arisen subsequent to that date, when they may be moved to the floor. As indicated above, the Agenda Committee acts upon appeals from Resolutions Committee decisions.
The President of the AAUP also appoints a Grievance Committee of the Annual Meeting, consisting of three Council members, to hear and investigate complaints against the Association and to report its findings either to the President and General Secretary, or to the Executive Committee. Finally, a credentials committee is chosen by the President to referee disputes about delegates' credentials, and a parliamentarian is selected to perform the usual function of that office.
The Washington Office
The national AAUP headquarters is located at 1012 Fourteenth Street, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005. Members may reach it by using a toll-free telephone number: (800) 424-2973.
The General Secretary is accountable to the Council and its Executive Committee for the efficiency and the morale of the professional staff. The General Secretary is in charge of the Washington office and currently is assisted by two Associate General Secretaries, veterans of the AAUP staff, one of whom works primarily on academic freedom and tenure controversies, and the other of whom handles government relations, elections, and liaison with the state conferences. Nine Associate Secretaries (including two Associate Counsels, a Director of Collective Bargaining, and a Director of Membership and Public Information) complete the professional staff in the Washington office.
Administrative officers include a Business Manager and two or three people who work primarily with membership services or on Academe. There are approximately seventeen AAUP administrative staff members who handle secretarial, receptionist, research, and other office duties. Each one reports to a particular professional staff member, who supervises one of the following areas of activity: (1) Government Relations, (4) Collective Bargaining, (5) Legal Counsel, (6) Academe, (7) Membership, and (8) the Business Office.
Professional staff officers must be fully acquainted with academic traditions and able to maintain numerous close contacts within the academic community. While most people with academic backgrounds prefer to live and labor in a college community an extended commitment to full time AAUP work tends to prevent a subject matter specialist from teaching or researching in his or her field. There is an analogy with becoming a full-time academic administrator; the alteration is frequently one of occupation, not merely of jobs.
Fortunately, the Association offers professional staff members salaries and periodic raises comparable to those received by professors with the same academic experience at leading universities, as well as generous retirement, medical, vacation, and sabbatical benefits, and the same academic freedom, tenure, and grievance procedure protections that the AAUP recommends for college and university faculty members. The turnover in AAUP professional staff is consequently low, even though other Washington organizations occasionally outbid the AAUP for the services of an employee.
The non-professional staff works in one of the most competitive markets in the nation for secretarial and other office services. In recent years an increasing level of technical skill has been required of such employees, as office machinery, including computer equipment, has been introduced. An understanding of how the Washington office is organized, information about who is in charge of what, and an appreciation for the financial and other constraints under which the AAUP staff members labor should be a concern of every chapter and conference leader, and every member of the national Council. They should respond promptly to requests by the Association's elected leaders and/or its Washington office staff, in order to help resolve members' problems in a timely manner.
The Budget Process
Membership dues finance most of the Association's activities. The balance comes largely from contributions, subscriptions to Academe, advertising in AAUP publications, and investments.
Staff salaries and benefits, staff travel, office rent, equipment and supplies, contracted services, and mail and telephone expense account for approximately ninety percent of the Association's expenditures, while membership, collective bargaining, and conference grants plus Council and committee travel and the expense of holding the Annual Meeting use up most of the remaining ten percent.
The Secretary-Treasurer of the Association manages its investments, handles its bills and deposits, arranges for an annual audit, sees that appropriate records are kept of all financial transactions, and reports periodically to the Council and its Executive Committee on all of these endeavors. In exercising these responsibilities he or she works closely with the General Secretary and the Business Manager. In recent years the return on investments has been high and audit reports have been favorable.
During the summer months the Washington office prepares a proposed budget for the following calendar year. The President, the General Secretary, and the Secretary-Treasurer estimate income and discuss expenditures. Senior staff members confer with the General Secretary about funding their particular areas of responsibility. The Business Manager, under the supervision of the General Secretary, then prepares a formal draft budget which is mailed to the Executive Committee of the Council in advance of its September meeting.
Having examined the proposed budget, the members of the Executive Committee discuss it line by line before approving it, usually with revisions and attached contingencies. At the same time, the current budget, which is about to enter its final quarter, receives close attention, so that necessary adjustments may be made. These actions provide a basis for planning, in advance of definitive action by the Council two months later.
In November the Executive Committee reconvenes. One task is to review the draft budget for the year before submission to the Council with the Executive Committee's recommendations attached. Usually this process has produced a consensus, but it is possible that the Association's President, Secretary-Treasurer, General Secretary, or a member or members of the Executive Committee and/or the professional staff might wish to recommend revisions to the Council, a step which can be taken as well by individual members of that body. Following such discussions a vote of the Council will establish a budget for the year beginning on January 1.
Meetings of the Executive Committee in February and June, and of the Council during the latter month, usually concentrate on other matters, but small adjustments to the budget are common. If, however, the June Annual Meeting re-orders the priorities of the Association or imposes some additional responsibilities, such decisions might well have a substantial impact on the Association's budget and require an adjustment when the council convenes following the Annual Meeting.
THE STANDING COMMITTEES
Lists of the members of AAUP committees and advisory boards are ordinarily published annually in the first issue of Academe. The committees that customarily report to the Council and the Annual Meeting are committees A, F, N, R, T, W, and Z.
Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
The first of sixteen committees established at the organizational meeting of the Association in 1915, Committee A consists of a Chair, seven or eight experienced AAUP members (some who have extensive legal training), several consultants who were formerly long term members of the committee, the President of the Association, the General Secretary, and the Associate General Secretary whose primary responsibility is academic freedom and tenure issues. Except for ex officio persons, members of this committee are appointed by the President for staggered terms of four years, and reappointment for a second term is not unusual.
Ordinarily meeting twice a year, prior to the Council sessions in June and November, the members of Committee A conduct investigations of alleged violations of academic freedom and recommend to the Council and Annual Meeting the imposition or the withdrawal of censure against violators. Guided by the provisions of the Redbook which appear in the section entitled "Academic Freedom, Tenure and Due Process," by the "academic common law" contained in the reports of investigating subcommittees approved by Committee A for publication in Academe and the AAUP Bulletin, and by established legal precedent, Committee A interprets and applies basic principles to current controversies within its sphere of interest and action.
Committee A has been responsible for publication of over two hundred and fifty reporters regarding infringements of academic freedom, tenure, or due process. Since the Washington office customarily receives over one thousand academic freedom cases and complaints each year, those that eventually reach the pages of Academe represent but the tip of the iceberg. Such reports almost invariably lead to censure by the Association, as recommended by Committee A at Annual Meetings.
A list of administrations currently under censure appears in each issue of Academe. Additionally, a detailed report on "Developments Relating to Censure by the Association" normally appears in the spring issue of Academe, while reports of Committee A for the previous academic year, which customarily appear in the spring issue of Academe, while reports of Committee A for the previous academic year, which customarily appears in the fall issues of that journal, not only cover developments regarding the imposition and removal of censure, but also comment upon litigation, respond to inquiries, and emphasize fresh areas of concern in regard to academic freedom and due process. Finally, Committee A's twice yearly reports or statements, such as a recent one by its Chair, declaring that "Principles of academic freedom and tenure are ... intended to protect ... rights relating to tenure, even against the action of a majority of a teacher's colleagues."
How Committee A Works
Academic freedom, tenure, and due process cases are handled by the AAUP in the following manner.
A complaint is received in the Washington office. In cases "where attention by the Association seems justified," inquiries are made to develop the facts, clarify the issues, and seek a solution through mediation.
Failing a satisfactory resolution the staff may recommend the appointment of an ad hoc investigating committee of usually two or three members of the Association, one of whom is designated as chair. The decision to initiate this phase is the responsibility of the General Secretary. At least one member of the ad hoc committee has participated previously in an AAUP academic freedom investigation. Committee members are thoroughly briefed on Association procedures and provided with information about the case under investigation, including available documentary evidence. The Washington office provides secretarial and mailing services and underwrites legitimate telephone, travel and other logistical expenses.
In most instances, the investigating committee visits the institution against which the complaint was lodged, to secure additional documents and to interview parties to the dispute. It then notifies the authorities at the institution under investigation of the impending visit, declaring its intention to proceed in an impartial manner to ascertain facts as objectively as possible, and to cooperate with all parties. Committee members should not accept hospitality or other indulgences from parties to the investigation but may utilize facilities offered by the institution to assist in the inquiry, if it appears that this will assist in conducting an efficient and objective investigation.
At an institution which has a local AAUP chapter, the General Secretary will inform the chapter officers of the ad hoc committee's impending visit, and their assistance may be sought in making local arrangements. But no local members of the AAUP participates in the actual investigation. To obtain a full understanding of the alleged violation, as well as of conditions of academic freedom, tenure, and due process at the institution under investigation, the committee will generally follow procedures set forth in the document titled "Association Procedures in Academic Freedom and Tenure Cases, Approved by Committee A on August 4, 1957, and as Subsequently Amended."
A confidential report is then submitted to the General Secretary. Although the investigating committee may recommend whether to publish its report, and whether to censure the administration concerned, the decision regarding publication is Committee A's. Censure is a matter not only for committee A but also for the Council and the Annual Meeting.
The next step is consideration of the report by the Washington office staff, in consultation with the investigating committee. The report is then forwarded to Committee A, which may revise it. Copies of this revised report are then forwarded by the General Secretary to the parties who figure in it most prominently, including the chief administrative officers of the institutions involved, with a request for corrections of factual errors and comments upon its conclusions. Responses to these requests are later incorporated by the investigating committee, the Washington staff, or Committee A into the report itself or annexed to it, and Committee decides whether to publish it, wit or without additional changes. Before it appears in print, a copy of the report in final form will be sent to the parties to the dispute.
Those investigations by their very nature are deliberate. As one commentator noted, "an average delay of almost two and one-half years for the machinery of justice to grind out judgment is sobering." The lapse of time between the receipt of complaints and the publication of reports appeared to bear a "similarity to the delay in jury trial cases between the filing of complaints and the rendition of jury verdicts." Additional time passes between publication of investigative reports and action by the Council and Annual Meeting.
Ultimately, changes in institutional policies are required by the AAUP to remove censure. Administrators on the censured campus are encouraged to provide evidence of reform (by changing their policies or regulations), repentance (by admitting past errors), and redress (by indemnifying and/or reinstating injured parties or rehearing the original case while abiding by AAUP-approved policies and procedures). Repentance is rarely stated explicitly, but is usually implied in significant acts of reform. And, as an AAUP special committee once asserted, "it would be better if the Association looked upon redress as a desideratum quietly to be sought rather than as a condition loudly to be proclaimed. Nor should it feel obliged to demand redress in order to indemnify the victim or to avenge his wrongs. Conditions for removal [of censure] should be designed to increase the general good by reducing the chance of future evil. They should not be imposed to exact revenge or to dispense retributive justice."
Committee B on Professional Ethics
In his remarks at the organizational meeting of the Association in 1915, it first President, John Dewey, proclaimed that a basic concern of the AAUP would be the formulation of professional standards "quite as scrupulous regarding the obligations imposed by freedom as jealous for the freedom itself." Indeed, asserted Dewey, academic freedom could be no more than incidental to the development of professional standards. For it would be "the existence of publicly recognized and enforced standards [which] would tend almost automatically to protect the freedom of the individual and to secure institutions against its abuse."
The 1915 report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, the foundation of later AAUP statements of principle, devoted six pages to a discussion of faculty members' obligations. In 1916 Association Committee I was established, with Dewey as its first chairperson, to formulate a "code of university ethics." No such code was ever produced, either by the original body or by its eventual successor, Committee B. As Bertram H. Davis wrote in 1970, the AAUP could not realistically emulate the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association in attempting to enforce ethical statements because "members of the legal and medical profession are largely self-employed and deal directly with the public," while professors "are not self-employed and it is their institutions rather than they which deal directly with the public."
Under the leadership of Professor Dewey and his immediate successors, Committee I answered specific questions, usually theoretical in character, regarding professional ethics. Except for a single notable period of activity, the modern version of the "ethics committee," designated by the letter B, has only however, pointed out that academic freedom "carries with it duties correlative with rights," and that a professor's "special position in the community imposes special obligations." It sanctioned "termination for cause of a continuous appointment," implying strongly that among the valid reasons for dismissal of a tenured professor were demonstrated "incompetence" and "moral turpitude" in the sense of "behavior that would evoke condemnation by the academic community generally." And it should be declared that faculty members should be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort" to make clear that were not institutional spokespersons."
The connection thus established between the "Rights and Responsibilities of Faculty" was elaborated upon by Professor Ralph Brown of the Yale University Law School in the AAUP Bulletin for the summer of 1966 (pp. 131-40). He insisted that "the primary right and responsibility" of any faculty member was "always to exercise and cherish academic freedom." This would be accomplished in three ways: by diffusing knowledge through teaching, by augmenting knowledge through investigation and publication, and by attaining "expertness" and applying it "to the problems of a discipline and of society." Stemming from this basic right and responsibility was another: "to share in the government of colleges and universities."
During the period 1958-1962 Committee B temporarily formulated a policy on faculty responsibility. The committee tried to draft a detailed code of ethics, but abandoned the effort in favor of a brief statement of ethical principles. First published in the AAUP Bulletin in the summer of 1965 (pp. 302-03) and then considerably revised, it was republished in that journal in March and a final version was approved by the Council in April 1966 and endorsed by the Annual Meeting that same month as Association policy.
The Statement on Professional Ethics (see Redbook, pp. 75-76) reiterates "that membership in the academic profession carries with it special responsibilities" and attempts to delineate "those general standards that serve as a reminder of the variety of obligations assumed by all members of the profession." A faculty member's "responsibility to his subject is to seek and to state the truth." With students and colleagues he or she upholds and attempts to embody high scholarly standards, objectivity, fairness and academic freedom. He or she accepts an equitable "share of faculty responsibilities for the governance of his [or her] institution. Recognizing the imperatives of teaching and scholarship, a professor nevertheless must not shirk his or her civic obligations, in particular the duty "to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public understanding of academic freedom."
In accordance with its commitment "to issue from time to time supplemental statements on specific problems" relating to professional ethics, Committee B published a report on "Late Resignation" in 1968, largely a condensed reiteration of two previous documents, the aforementioned "Statement on Professional Ethics," and a "Statement on Recruitment and Resignation of Faculty Members," adopted by the Association of American Colleges and approved by the AAUP Council in 1961. The 1968 report declared that faculty members should receive notice of their status for the following academic year not later than March 15, discouraged offers of appointment being made to professors at other institutions after May 1, and requested faculty members to give prompt notice to be furnished by May 15 or thirty days following receipt of an offer of "continued employment the following year, whichever date occurs later."
The next publication on professional ethics emerged in 1970 from Committee A. In a statement on "Freedom and Responsibility," inspired both by campus demonstrations during the Vietnam war and reprisals against faculty members and students involved in them, professors were reminded of their "substantial academic obligations," including their responsibilities both in the classroom and in dealing elsewhere with students, as previously treated in a much more elaborate exposition entitled a "Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students." Asserting that efforts should be made on campuses henceforth "to emphasize preventative as well as disciplinary action," Committee A recommended that professors take the lead in developing procedures including improvements "in disciplinary machinery," to be employed by administrations, with faculty consultation, in cases of potential or actual disruptions. A need existed "for the faculty to assume a more positive role as guardian of academic values against unjustified assaults from its own members." Professors should actively promote "adherence to basic principles of academic freedom." Accompanying this exhortation was the pledge, still in effect, that the AAUP will "consult and work with any responsible group, within or outside the academic community," to pursue these goals.
One problem of professional ethics continued to plague both Committee A and B: the apparent need for sanctions other than dismissal. To insist that "lesser cases must be treated in the same manner as a dismissal case ... may mean on the one hand that many just grievances may simply go unredressed because of the discouragement that the elaborateness of dismissal procedures imposes upon the aggrieved party and upon the institution, and ... may mean on the other hand that the institution is frankly encouraged to seek more devious and subliminal ways of disciplining its faculty." Hence representatives of Committees A and B, meeting as a "Joint Subcommittee on Faculty Responsibility," published a report listing sanctions ranging from oral reprimands to "suspensions from service for a stated period," but declining to propose a "model form of procedure" for handling cases of alleged faculty irresponsibility where the maximum appropriate action would be less than dismissal. The subcommittee members could not visualize "a single mode of intermediate academic due process" suitable for every case of supposed misconduct. But they did agree that all arrangements to handle complaints "beyond the stage of informal consultation looking toward mutual settlement" should require "substantial faculty consultation and participation in their formulation as well as in their application." This stipulation was in conformity with the earlier requirement that "questions concerning propriety of conduct" on a campus should be handled "by a faculty group within the affected institution."
Although there should be opportunities for students and faculty members as well as administrators "aggrieved by an alleged instance of professional irresponsibility to make an appropriate complaint," Committee B, in an earlier statement, viewed "the making of charges against named persons ... as a serious matter." Such charges should always be supported by documentary evidence, "so that specific inquires can be made."
In AAUP literature, faculty responsibility has usually been discussed from the perspective of what constitutes irresponsibility or misconduct and how to deal with it. But the question may also be viewed from the opposite side, namely in terms of a professor's obligation to assume certain responsibilities beyond his contractual teaching and research duties. If faculties claim governance prerogatives, critics charge, then they should assume responsibility for long overdue reforms on their campuses. If they continue to neglect this duty, then outsiders--ambitious politicians, zealous alumni, clients and board members, and even students and their relatives--will themselves attempt to initiate alterations in institutional policies and practices.
Committee C on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication
This committee has been irregularly active since its inception. Policy statements which it helped to develop, published in the Redbook (pp. 161-70), relate to faculty workloads, the evaluation of teaching, and possible conflicts of interest in government-financed research. Many articles in the AAUP Bulletin and Academe reflect a deep interest among professors in matters within Committee C's purview. It now faces a new challenge in the form of a nationwide "assessment" movement, regarding which see the section on academic freedom, tenure and due process which appears later in this handbook.
Committee F on Chapters, Conferences, Members and Dues
Dicta regarding Association membership appear in Article II of its Constitution. Membership in chapters is treated in Article VII and conference membership is covered in Article VIII. National dues are established by the Council, subject to the will of the Annual Meeting. Chapter and conference dues are self-imposed, except that comprehensive dues (as a condition of national membership) for those entities must be approved by Committee F and ratified by the Council and Annual Meeting.
The impression is widely held, reinforced repeatedly by complaints from lapsed members, that dues are too high. Yet anyone who carefully scrutinizes the annual budget of the Association will find little room for retrenchment to reduce dues. Other professional societies have raised their dues and fees drastically during the past fifteen years with little adverse effect on their membership totals. Most colleges and universities have recently increased their costs to students at a rate exceeding both the national inflation index and AAUP dues increases; yet higher education enrollment has not suffered.
Often professors assume that such bodies as faculty senates provide protection for their academic freedom and governance rights and maintain an adequate level of ethical responsibility among the local faculty. But the issues that faculty senates customarily treat are often dissimilar to those with which AAUP members are most concerned, and the regular business of such bodies is influenced by administrators. Moreover, there is no independent nationwide support system to sustain faculty senators amid adversity; their organizations exist at the pleasure of administrators and governing boards only within the limitations of policies established by non-faculty authorities, who frequently function beyond regular reach at a distant capital or at Washington, D.C. Faculty senates may provide a convenient forum for the discussion of local issues and even a means of inducing administrators to heed faculty concerns, but they are frail reeds compared with strong AAUP chapters when serious issues of academic freedom and responsibility arise.
During the past half-decade the question of declining AAUP membership has occupied more of the time of the national Executive Committee than any other single issue. Some successes have been realized. But significant membership increases, in the long run, will probably be proportional to the degree of visibility accompanying continued efforts within the Association to uphold and promulgate its principles and to an increase in the sense of personal responsibility among non-members for participating in the defense and augmentation of the authority of AAUP principles.
A detail discussion of membership recruitment techniques and opportunities for assistance in this sphere from the national office may be found in the discussion later in this handbook of the functions of AAUP chapters.
Committee H on the History of the Association
There is no complete history of the AAUP. From time to time retrospective analyses, such as the 1965 "Report of the Self-Survey Committee," and articles about particular incidents, epochs, or personalities, have appeared in Association publications. As yet, however, the essence of the AAUP's history reposes in the minds and memories of its older adherents, and in the Association archives, many of which were recently transferred to the Library of Congress.
Committee I on Association Investments
This body advises the officers and the General Secretary. It is chaired by the Association's Secretary-Treasurer. In recent years the rate of return on investments has been more than satisfactory, as indicated in annual reports to the Executive Committee.
Committee L on the Historically Black Institutions and the Status of Minorities in the Profession
This renewed committee held its first meeting in some time in March 1988. Among the topics discussed were mentoring for minority students and newly hired professors, recruiting of minority faculty members, and chapter development at historically Black institutions.
During the 1970s the AAUP went on record at a series of Annual Meetings as recognizing "the invaluable contribution black colleges and universities are making and will continue to make" in offering underprivileged students "an opportunity to develop their potential." It noted "with grave concern certain ... practices, such as mergers which eliminate existing black institutions...." And it placed in its Redbook a policy statement expressing unqualified opposition to, and a commitment to use "measures, including censure" against, any colleges or universities practicing illegal racial discrimination. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, p. 179, and Summer 1972, p. 137, and Summer 1973, p. 144; Redbook, p. 87.)
Committee N on Representation of Economic and Professional Interests
Background
During the 1960s increasing dissatisfaction grew among faculty members with perceived authoritarian administration of colleges and universities, fueled by a growing militance paralleling student protests against the Vietnam war and civil rights violations, Faculty senates or councils were established on many campuses, encouraged and aided by AAUP affiliates. At some institutions, however, administrators refused to share governance with faculty representative bodies; as an alternative the idea of collective bargaining, with sanctions to enforce negotiated contracts between faculty organizations and governing boards, often began to take hold.
At first, AAUP leaders resisted what a veteran General Secretary termed "trade union mechanisms." He deplored "certain activists" within the Association having allegedly abandoned "the philosophy of shared responsibility, where reasoned consultation among academic equals is adequate for the resolution of most campus problems." signs of interest in collective bargaining by faculty members at the City University of New York, and requests for AAUP advice, however, led to a seminar in December 1964 conducted for the purpose of enlightening Association leaders and staff members regarding the complexities of formal academic bargaining. Although this conference led to no declarations of policy, it did inspire the appointment of a special committee on the representation of economic interests, drawn from committees T and Z, to suggest a position for the Association to take regarding collective bargaining for its affiliates, "when other organizations seek to transpose to college faculties principles of collective action applicable to industry and commerce." (AAUP Bulletin, Autumn, 1965, pp. 374-77; Summer, 1966, p. 230; and Summer, 1967, p. 115.)
The ad hoc committee reported to the Council in March 1966 that the Association should oppose the extension of the principle of exclusive representation to faculty member in institutions of higher education and should therefore recommend legislation which would require public institutions to establish adequate internal structures of faculty participation in the government of the institution. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer, 1966, p. 229.)
The Council both endorsed the above statement as Association policy and approved supporting language holding that
The Association prefers that all faculty members participate in making decisions and protecting their economic interests through structures of self-government within the institution, with the faculty participating either directly or through faculty-elected councils or senates. As integral parts of the faculty, such councils or senates can more effectively and appropriately represent the faculty than any outside organization acting as exclusive representative. It is fundamental, however, that whatever means are developed for representation, the faculty must have a truly effective voice in decisions of the institution and that the economic interests of the faculty must be adequately protected and promoted. (Ibid.)
The Council asserted that in cases where a faculty's voice was not heard and its legitimate economic interests not met, and where it might therefore wish to seek the assistance of an outside organization in negotiating with its administration, the AAUP chapter on the affected campus might "seek to become the exclusive representative of the faculty" by obtaining the approval of the General Secretary, who would enjoin the chapter to "pursue the following objectives:
- To protect and promote the economic interests of the faculty as a whole in accordance with the established principles of the Association.
- To establish with the institution democratic structures which provide full participation by all faculty members....
- To obtain explicit guarantees of academic freedom and tenure....
- To create an orderly and clearly defined [grievance process] to which procedure any individual or group shall have full access.
Furthermore, no AAUP chapter bargaining for faculty members would call or support a strike or work stoppage, nor would any professor on an affected campus be compelled to join the AAUP or make any financial contribution to it "as a condition of his enjoying the benefits of representation." (Ibid., p.230, and Winter, 1969, pp. 490-91)
Committee T continued to consider the issue of faculty representation, and issued a slightly revised version of the above statement in January 1968. This statement was approved by both Council and the Annual Meeting that spring. A year later a few alterations were added by Committee T and then by the Council, the most important of which was the sanctioning of strikes under "extraordinary circumstances." Such work stoppages would be permissible in instances of flagrant violations of academic freedom when the "principles of economic government" could not be maintained by "rational methods." Committee T then transferred its jurisdiction in the area of faculty economic and professional interest to a newly established committee N, the appointment of which as a standing committee confirmed the commitment of the AAUP to collective bargaining. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1968, pp. 152-54, and Summer, 1969, pp. 155-59, and Winter, 1969, pp. 489-91.)
Resistance to this course of action within the Association was crumbling. General Secretary Bertram H. Davis warned that "the emphasis on power" of the unions tended "to perpetuate the employer-employee concept through an industrial style of collective bargaining," and thus institutions might lose all opportunity to establish the collegial governance which was "indispensable to their welfare." (AAUP Bulletin, Autumn, 1968, p. 320.)
By 1969, however, two staff associates, Alfred D. Sumberg and Matthew W. Finken, felt impelled by a deluge of inquiries about collective bargaining to prepare the way for the AAUP to enter the forum of unionism. At a leadership seminar for conference officers held in October, Finken affirmed that "collective bargaining by faculty senates or AAUP chapter" could in fact bring "improved conditions to beleaguered faculties." (AAUP Bulletin, March 1969, p. 97, and Winter, 1969, pp. 494-95.)
Finkin suggested factors to be reckoned with were (1) the character of the institution; (2) the composition of the bargaining unit; (3) the nature of the bargaining agent, especially whether it would be an independent faculty association or an affiliate of one or more established state or national organizations; (4) the scope of negotiations authorized by law, including whether faculty rights like tenure, or traditional areas of faculty authority were to be absorbed into the bargaining process; (5) the impact on campus of an adversarial manner of reaching decisions " in total packages rather than piecemeal;" and (6) the scope and content of the contract, including the grievance procedure. What remained to be determined, as collective bargaining spread to additional institutions of higher education, was whether such schools might retain a "decision-making process in which the university community as a whole examines the educational merit and cumulative effect of decision," and "reach accord apart from the bargaining power of special interest groups." (Ibid., 150-62.) The AAUP initiated "an intensive study" to survey its "program and structure in the light of labor, tax, and corporation law," in order "to determine how we can best adapt the Association's organization and structure to the changed and complex academic situation in which we now find ourselves." (Ibid., Summer, 1971, pp. 182-83)
Following acceptance in 1969 of the "significant role" that might be played by the adversarial-managerial model in academic life, the Association had initial success in union organizing. It became the bargaining agent for professors at Oakland, Rutgers, St. John's, and some smaller institutions. But the entire State University of New York system was lost when the Public Employee Relations Board of that state ruled that are many categories of professional employees besides teachers and researchers, and therefore ineligible to belong to the AAUP, should not be disqualified from belonging to the bargaining agency. In 1971, Committee N reacted by suggesting "that eligibility for membership in the Association should extend both to members of a faculty and to professional appointees included in a collective bargaining unit within the faculty." The chairman of Committee N suggested that perhaps the AAUP would change its name to "The American Association of University Professionals." (Ibid., pp. 211-13)
The Association Factionalized
At this juncture, collective bargaining emerged as a major issue with the AAUP. Although it had long proudly maintained that its services were available to all professors whether or not they were members, the advent of agency shops (requirements that employers withhold membership dues from all employees represented by the bargaining unit) raised a serious question whether sanctions that would necessarily accompany these new arrangements were not incompatible with academic freedom and tenure rights. A declaration by Committee A that the AAUP should incorporate "in any agency shop or compulsory dues check-off arrangements provisions designed to accommodate affirmatively asserted individual conscientious objection to such an arrangement with any representative" did not resolve the issue. (Ibid., pp. 213-24.)
A Chairman of Committee Z voiced considerable concern about the extent to which a shift to an adversarial relationship with administrators might interfere with the annual salary survey, one of the Association's unique contributions to the world of higher education. And Committee T had now to contend with claims that it was "nonsense" for AAUP members to think that they could simultaneously "function as part of the governing structure of academic institutions and at the same time act as the collective bargaining agent for the faculty." Universities would be "foolish to permit the unions, through the faculty, to sit on both sides of the bargaining table." Certainly the advent of collective bargaining on a campus would provide a convenient pretext for its administration or governing board to deny any further validity for the principle of "shared authority," long a basic AAUP policy. (Ibid.)
Despite the publication of such reservations during the hectic summer of 1971, the Council which met that fall voted on October 30 to commit the AAUP to "pursue collective bargaining, as a major additional way of realizing the Association's goals in higher education, and will allocate such resources and staff as are necessary for a vigorous selective development of this activity beyond present levels." Collective bargaining, however, was "not to be pursued to the detriment of basic programs," especially the labors of Committees A, T, and Z, for which "the need among the profession as a whole" appeared greater than ever. Indeed, collective bargaining as an Association activity would be "salutary," the General Secretary wrote, stating the sense of the Council, as it enhanced traditional AAUP programs, and would "be injurious to the degree that it impedes them."
Out of a budget of approximately $1,800,000 for 1972, funds totaling no more that $245,000, including "what can be charged to general overhead," would be set aside for CB activity. (This amounted to an increase from 12% of the 1971 Association budget to 21% for 1972. And the approval of the General Secretary, following deliberate staff assessment of the situation, would be required prior to each instance of AAUP-sponsored collective bargaining.) On May 5, 1972, the Annual Meeting, by a 373-54 vote,, endorsed the Council's CB position. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter, 1971, pp. 511-12, March, 1972, pp. 46-54, December, 1972, p. 135, and Summer 1973. p. 146.)
By 1972 no AAUP chapter expressing interest in gaining certification from the General Secretary as a collective bargaining agent of the Association, "and appearing to have the resources," had failed to obtain the necessary permission. The "extraordinary circumstances" required in 1966 to accomplish this had, it seemed, existed in all instances. Committee A had not decided that an agency shop arrangement, in itself, would not violate academic freedom, provided some accommodation was included for conscientious objectors. And Committee N was considering proposing an alteration in the policy of eschewing strikes except in cases where AAUP principles of academic freedom and governance had been "flagrantly" violated, without any prospect of correction by "rational methods." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, pp. 203-04, and Spring 1972, pp. 46-47.)
Sanford Kadish, the retiring president of the Association, pondered these events in his farewell address to the 1972 Annual Meeting. Pointing out that faculty members were "the essence of the university enterprise, as well as its employees," he warned that "a radical imbalance in the direction of the employee role tends to create problems for the theory of the profession" long held by the AAUP. Strikes, for example, deliberately harmed "the educational mission, although temporarily, in order to promote the personal employee interest, in contradiction to the service ideal of subordinating personal interest to the advancement of the purposes of the university. Its use, therefore," Kadish warned, "tends to impugn all our claimed entitlements.... Moreover, the process [of collective bargaining] ... tends to remit issues which faculty should themselves determine to outside agencies, such as state and federal boards, and union bureaucracies." And the entire process led to political, rather than academic, decision-making. Only if collective bargaining excluded "external, non-academic control," and buttressed, rather than displaced, "traditional faculty self-government," could it be "absorbed, though with some strain, into an acceptable theory of the profession." And this, Kadish suggested, was an unlikely outcome. (Ibid., Summer 1972, pp. 120-25.)
The incoming president of the Association was much more favorably inclined toward the CB experiment. He declared in rebuttal to Kadish that he did not believe that the AAUP's new position on collective bargaining conflicted with its longstanding principles. Indeed, the "central purpose" of participation by the Association in collective bargaining was "to gain recognition of AAUP principles of academic freedom and tenure, faculty participation in university governance, and shared authority in the allocation of resources.... Faculty power, yes; but for the professional principles we wish to protect and promote." (Ibid., p. 117.)
In October 1972, the Council approved publication of a Committee N "Statement on Collective Bargaining" which superseded the Statement of Policy on Representation of Economic and Professional Interests, approved by the Council and amended in 1969. The new document was endorsed by the 1973 Annual Meeting. Affirming a "pressing need" in the world of higher education for "a specialized model of collective bargaining" reflecting AAUP standards, while at the same time strengthening "the influence of the faculty in the distribution of an institution's economic resources," the 1973 statement set forth four goals for chapters attaining faculty representative status: (1) to "promote the economic and professional interests of the faculty as a whole; (2) to establish democratic structures for faculty governance; (3) to obtain explicit guarantees of academic freedom and tenure;" and (4) to create procedures for consideration of faculty problems and grievances open to all. Affirmatively asserted conscientious objections to compulsory dues were to be accommodated, and strikes were to be called at supported "only in extraordinary situations which ... flagrantly violate academic freedom or the principles of academic government...." (Ibid., Winter 1972, p. 423, and Summer, 1973, pp. 148, 167.)
Strikes
A rash of strikes and faculty boycotts of classes during the middle 1960s, many in support of student demonstrations of various kinds, impelled AAUP leaders to formulate a position on the subject. As an interim measure, following the announcement of "what was probably the first major faculty strike against a university administration in the United States," which occurred at St. Johns University in New York, the Executive Committee announced, in a statement issued by the General Secretary, that the Association did not "endorse a strike against an academic institution;" did not, however, consider a refusal of a professor to cross a picket line maintained by colleagues to be "a violation of professional ethics," but upheld the right of professors also in such circumstances to "continue to meet their classes;" and asserted "that it is not a violation of professional responsibility for a faculty member to refuse to teach the classes of a colleague who has been dismissed in violation of accepted principles of academic freedom and tenure." (AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, 1977 ed., p. 58.)
In May, the Council agreed with the Executive Committee, maintaining that "no strike or work stoppage should be called or supported" by AAUP chapters engaged in collective bargaining. But the haste with which these statements had been adopted influenced the Council to appoint a committee further to examine the subject of faculty strikes. The ensuing committee report was published in 1968. It retreated from a no strike position; holding, instead, that although such an action was "inappropriate as a mechanism for the resolution of most conflicts within higher education," circumstances might arise in which flagrant violations of academic freedom or the principles of academic government were "so resistant to rational methods of discussion, persuasion, and conciliation, that faculty members may feel impelled to express their condemnation by withholding their services...." They should do so, however, only if a controlling agency appeared "inflexibly bent on a course which undermines an essential element of the educational process." (Ibid., pp. 57-59.)
Participation in strikes by professors did not "by itself constitute grounds for dismissal or for other sanctions" against them. The Association would defend all "members of the profession who are inadequate or unacceptable," or who were denied due process. Yet a resort to strikes as ordinary mechanisms "for the resolution of conflicts with administrations or governing boards imperils the faculty's just claim to partnership in the government of the institution, by implying acceptance of the status of mere employees." Moreover, a strike was "a witness of failure." It risked "creating deeper rifts" between those whose relationship "should be one of mutual trust." And insofar as it was designed to advance the personal interests of professors, it might appear to contradict "the dedication of the faculty to the educational interests of the students." (Ibid.)
"We emphatically reject," the Council-approved 1968 statement declared, "the industrial pattern which holds the strike in routine reserve for use whenever economic negotiations reach an impasse." Nor should professors strike "in support of claims of against the institution of another trade union," or to "dramatize" a political position. Only "positive educational objectives," combined with "cumulative grievances or some precipitate act of tyranny," justified strikes. (Ibid.)
Arbitration
If strikes were not recommended in states where forbidden by law, what alternatives did faculty members in collective bargaining have? One obvious choice was compulsory arbitration. A joint subcommittee of the AAUP's Committees A and N published some guidelines. In instances involving collective bargaining, it asserted, arbitration might be "the preferred way" to resolve academic disputes and grievances, as well as "to avoid deadlocks or administrative domination." Noting that "resort to any body outside the institution ... for an official resolution of disputes in matters of faculty status, rights, and responsibilities poses a serious challenge to accepted notions of institutional autonomy," the subcommittee suggested, nevertheless, that "outside impartial review may well be useful" when administrators and trustees proved "unresponsive to Association standards and faculty actions." For arbitration was frequently less expensive than court action and obtained quicker results. Moreover, the rules and precedents of the judicial system frequently did not suit the peculiarities of the academic world. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter, 1972, pp. 399-412; Redbook, pp. 149-52.)
To be effective, however, the arbitration required (1) "sound internal procedures ... which enjoy the confidence of both faculty and administration," (2) "careful definitions of both arbitral subjects and standards to be applied to the arbiter," (3) "the selection of arbitrators knowledgeable in the ways of the academic world," including the "critical value of academic freedom," and (4) "appropriate weight" to be given at the arbitration hearing to AAUP standards. Even if all these safeguards were satisfied, the Association would "continue to challenge significant departures from elemental academic rights whether or not ... in a collective agreement or an arbitrator's award." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer, 1973, pp. 168-70; Redbook, pp. 149-52.)
The AAUP policy statement prescribed stages of arbitration, arbitral standards, and guidelines for the selection of arbitrators. Applied to cases of dismissal, binding arbitration ordinarily substitutes a jointly selected expert neutral party for the courts; hence administrators and trustees should recognize that "it is not a question of whether institutional officers will be subject to external review, but of what forum is best equipped to perform the task." Therefore, another joint subcommittee of Committees A and N recommended in 1983 that in cases where a governing board ruled for dismissal against a faculty committee's recommendation not to dismiss, the affected professor who had pursued the "traditional procedures .. be given the right to proceed to arbitration," even when a collective bargaining representative opposes doing so. (In the latter case, the appellant would pay the costs of arbitration normally assumed by the CB agent.) Procedures for this kind of arbitration should be carefully specified in advance and the decision should be based on the written record. (Redbook, pp. 149-52; Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1983, 15a-17a.)
In Recent Years
By the 1973 Annual Meeting, AAUP chapters served as bargaining agents in eighteen colleges and universities and three junior colleges, "with an aggregate faculty in these bargaining units of over 8,000." A full-time Director of Collective Bargaining had been added to the Washington Office. Committee N drafted a handbook of operating guidelines for CB chapters. And a subcommittee considered issues that surfaced as AAUP members gained experience in bargaining. Meanwhile, the chairman of Committee T delineated a list of new issues regarding "governance principles relating to and resulting from collective bargaining." Such issues would occupy most of that committee's time and staff support in the immediate future. A subcommittee of Committee N addressed issues arising out of the enactment of state laws concerning collective bargaining that appeared applicable to public institutions of higher education. Specific contract language, model legislation, and adjustments in the procedures of the National Labor Relations Board and state administrative agencies were recommended by the subcommittee variously to deal with such questions as the applicability of the duty to bargain, the scope of representation, the selection of representatives, the scope of the bargaining processes, violations of agreements, strikes, and the administration of the law. Their recommendations, declared law professors Robert Gorman and Matthew Finkin, were designed to show how "the particular needs of the profession and of institutions of higher education" could best be met through the collective bargaining process. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer, 1973, pp. 165-66 and 184, and Autumn, 1974, pp. 331-40.)
The role of collective bargaining in the affairs of the Association bulked so large by 1982 that the presidential address dealt entirely with it. Admitting that "to some degree" the institution of formal bargaining had brought about "a shift on many campuses from collegial to adversary relationships between faculty and administration," and that "the fears that our membership outside of collective bargaining would decline" had "come to pass," Robert Gorman asserted, nevertheless, that "contrary to the fears of a decade ago, the participation of the AAUP in collective bargaining has not diminished our influence in higher education but rather has enhanced it." It had also made an "enormous contribution" to the Association itself by providing a mechanism by which a growing number of faculties shaped institutional regulations in personnel and educational matters, by "promoting the economic interests of the professorate," by rendering "essential AAUP principles ... fully enforceable as part of the contract rules prevailing in court cases and arbitration proceedings," and by bringing into the Association "tens of thousands of new AAUP members," including new leaders for the Council and the committees, as well as of significant payments of dues to help provide "financial support of the full range of Association programs." (Academe, September-October 1982, 1A-4A.)
Although collective bargaining chapters embraced roughly sixty percent of the total AAUP membership, Professor Gorman noted also, approximately seventy-eighty percent of the full time faculty members on American campuses were not engaged in CB activity. This "large constituency" still needed the protection and the unencumbered voice of the AAUP and remained its largest potential source of members. The AAUP stood for "the advocacy of principles rather than the advocacy of self-interest." And its methods were "reason, reflection, conciliation, persuasion." The AAUP approach "must be preserved," or the Association itself would disintegrate. Professor Gorman regarded it "as an absolutely indispensable condition of exploring avenues of joint activity with the other two national faculty associations that AAUP principle and programs remain strong and inviable.... Indeed, a cardinal objective of any join discussions should be the common adoption of Association principles and the commitment to the growth of Association programs ... which make us distinctive...." (Ibid.)
Bifurcation
Within the next several years there occurred a serious movement within the Association toward national affiliation (reflecting arrangements inherent in certain state or local "joint ventures") wit other higher education organizations.
There followed an extended debate within the Executive Committee concerning bifurcation of the Association into a Committee A segment and a CBC segment. Virtually forgotten throughout these discussions was the "third arm" of the Association, the Assembly of State Conferences. Certainly, if Committee A represented an investigatory, analytical, legalistic and philosophic approach to the protection of academic freedom, tenure, governance, prerogatives, and professional standards, and if the CBC along with Committee N represented primarily an economic approach, then it was the ASC and the state conferences, functioning in many jurisdictions where no higher education collective bargaining existed, which best exemplified the political approach. In the end the bifurcation plan was abandoned.
Unions, a writer in Academe maintained, had emerged in American higher education because they were the only way "to substitute ... government by law for government by men, ... to establish a "limiting unilateral managerial power," they had extended "the administrators alleged financial exigency as a justification for draconian measures, collective bargaining agreements could "make proposals, taking instead the form of binding statutes." (Academe, May-June 1984, pp. 29-34.)
Unions also "generally stimulated more collective faculty assertion of rights in ... governance." By requiring formalized arrangements, they brought hidden motives and intrigues into the open and facilitated democratic processes on campus. "In a collective bargaining framework, administrators," it was declared, must "act more like political leaders than hierarchical authorities, ... essentially the role which they have been assigned in the conception of the ideal university." In summary, they promoted, "as much as anything we are likely to devise, ... authentic self-government." (Ibid.)
These assertions stand unchallenged in Association literature today and the use of collective bargaining as an additional instrument to defend the professorate continues.
Yeshiva
A damaging setback for collective bargaining in higher education occurred in the Yeshiva decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Scarcely a decade after the National Labor Relations board had announced that it would henceforth exercise jurisdiction over private colleges and universities with annual incomes from all sources of one million dollars, a step which had helped to lead the AAUP and other faculty organizations into collective bargaining in the private sector, a five-to-four majority of the Supreme Court sustained a 1978 New York federal court's contention that professors in independent institutions of higher education were "managerial employees" who could not therefore exercise the right to bargain collectively under the National Relations Act of 1935 with a management of which they were also representatives. The argument by AAUP attorneys "that faculty decisions are generally endorsed by the administration not because the faculty are 'managers' but rather because of the faculty's special competence as 'professional employees' (who are covered by the National Labor Relations Act)" was rejected by the Court, which according to a future president of the AAUP had demonstrated "little understanding of the role of faculty in college and university governance." Although the Yeshiva decision held that organizing and bargaining were not affirmatively protected by federal law on private campuses, it did not invalidate existing contracts or attempts to construe state laws governing collective bargaining at public colleges and universities. Nevertheless, the AAUP, one of its leaders announced, would seek to overturn the Yeshiva decision by obtaining a "congressional amendment" of the National Labor Relations Act specifically to "include faculty members within its coverage." (Academe, May 1980, pp. 188-97.)
Six years after the Supreme Court's Yeshiva ruling, the National Labor Relations Board dealt faculty union organization at private institutions a further blow, ruling in October 1986 that faculty members at Boston University were not entitled by law to engage in collective bargaining. After 157 days of hearings, and having accumulated 21,820 pages of testimony, the Board, in reinforcing its Yeshiva position, cited "the collegial managerial authority consistently exercised by the faculty" at Boston University. Thus during a period in which "academic interest in unions is rapidly growing," the NLRB and federal courts continue to combine to raise obstacles to formal bargaining. (Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 8, 1986, pp. 13 and 18, and Nov. 12, 1986, p. 2. For discussions of a 1987 NLRB decision revoking faculty bargaining rights at Fairleigh Dickinson University and a similar 1986 decision limiting the CB rights of teachers at St. Joseph's College, a parochial school, as well as a brief summary of issues raised by the exclusion of over fifteen hundred professors at the University of Pittsburgh, a public institution, from CB rights, see Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 3, 35, and 60-62.)
The Association endorses congressional action to override the Yeshiva decision, by amending Section 2 (11) of the National Labor Relations Act to exempt faculty members from being designated as "managerial or supervisory employees" solely because they participate in decisions regarding educational policies. Committee R continues to conduct the campaign.
Current AAUP Collective Bargaining Policy
The Current Association policy on collective bargaining, printed in the Redbook on pages 145 and 146, differs little from the statement in 1974. A revised introduction still emphasizes bargaining as "an effective instrument" for promoting the historic purposes of the AAUP in the areas of economic freedom and governance. The presence of "institutions of faculty governance on a campus, "the policy statement reads, does "not preclude the need for or usefulness of collective bargaining," which can be employed to extend and strengthen the effectiveness both of AAUP principles and of the faculty voice in the allocation of institutional resources." And faculty strikes, formerly approved "only in extraordinary situations are now viewed in abnormal circumstances as "a necessary and unavoidable means of dispute resolution."
The AAUP adheres to the commitment made by the Council in 1968 to come to the assistance of those "who are singled out for punishment on grounds which are inadequate or unacceptable or who are not afforded all the protection demanded by the requisites of due process." One technique in such cases is arbitration; another is utilization of available grievances procedures. (Redbook, p. 146. Cf. AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1973, p. 167 with Academe, Sept. Oct. 1983, p. 14a.)
A recent article, "The Grievance Process in a Collective Bargaining Setting" by Karen E. Lindberg (Academe, May-June 1986, pp. 20-24), written by an experienced grievance officer involved in collective bargaining at Eastern Michigan University for over a decade, generalized that good record keeping is vital, as are the development of clear criteria by faculty bodies for appointment, tenure, and promotion, and effective training of people to deal with grievances on behalf of the bargaining agent. Rotation of faculty grievance officers is discouraged; rather, suggests the author, such positions should be "stabilized." Whenever possible, problems should be addressed internally, rather than taken to arbitration, and evaluation procedures should include full disclosure of guidelines used and judgments rendered.
Grievance procedures should be included in any collective bargaining agreement. Late in 1987 AAUP Committees N and T approved a joint "Statement on Academic Government for Institutions Engaged in Collective Bargaining" that stressed "a contractually enforceable foundation to an institution's collegial governance structure" could "contribute significantly to the well-being of the institution." For collective bargaining should assure effective traditional forms of shared governance," by contributing to problem solving on campus in three ways. First, "communication" between faculty and administrators might be improved by formal negotiation procedures. Second, "consensus" on school policies and procedures could be reached by the same route. And third, "equitable implementation of established procedures" could be secured by formal bargaining. Thus, "by specifying and assuring the faculty role in institutional decision making, bargaining governance, operating under a contract which includes a grievance procedure, may uphold and reinforce the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities. (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1987, pp. 25-26.)
Role and Functions of Committee N and the CBC
The primary responsibility of Committee N, established by Council action in 1970, is to propose and to monitor AAUP policies regarding collective bargaining. The basic policy in this regard, adopted in 1973 and revised in 1984, asserts that "Collective bargaining is an effective instrument for achieving the objectives of the Association, by assuring the faculty an effective voice in decisions which vitally affect its members' professional well-being." (Redbook, 143, 145.)
CB chapters of AAUP are enjoined in this policy to "protect and promote the professional and economic interests of the faculty as a whole in accordance with the established principles of the Association," uphold "full participation by the faculty" in institutional governance, "obtain explicit guarantees of academic freedom and tenure," and establish "clearly defined procedures" for resolving problems and considering grievances of "any affected individual or group" in the institution.
"Affirmatively asserted conscientious objection" to compulsory dues requirements should be accommodated by CB chapters. Disputes should be settled by "discussion, persuasion, and accommodation within a climate of mutual concern and trust." Recommended devices for achieving such settlements are "mediation, fact-finding, or arbitration." Where agreement cannot be reached, however, "the Association recognizes that resort to economic pressure through strikes or other work action may be a necessary and unavoidable means of dispute resolution." Participation in such a work action "does not by itself constitute grounds for dismissal or for other sanctions against faculty members." The AAUP will apply its policies, especially those requiring due process, to all efforts to impose sanctions, and will "protect the interests" of professors whose punishments are based on "inadequate or unacceptable" grounds, "or who are not afforded all the protection demanded by the requisites of due process." (Redbook, 143-46.)
The operational arm of the Association in Committee N areas of responsibility is the Collective Bargaining Congress. Formed in 1973 and composed of dues-paying CB chapters of the AAUP, it holds two major assemblies annually, one in early December and the second in June at the time and place of the Annual Meeting of the Association. It considers purposes, structures, and work of the AAUP and supports local CB chapters in their efforts to incorporate Association policies into legally binding contracts with administrations and governing boards.
Grants to support AAUP collective bargaining activities are separately listed in the annual budgets of the Association. Funds thus provided are administered by a CB grant committee chaired by the chairperson of the CBC and consisting of two additional members of the CBC executive committee and the chairperson of committee N. A statement on "Procedures and Criteria for CB Grants," was approved by the Council in November 1984 and confirmed two years later. It provides that requests for grant or loan assistance "may be initiated by chapter officers or other appropriate officials through consultation with a professional officer involved in the collective bargaining program" and shall be made in writing to the Director of Collective Bargaining. Such requests "shall include information about the financial condition of the Chapter and a description of the activities to be supported by the requested funds." Applications for loans, which are interest-free for up to three years, will include plans for repayment. "In unusual circumstances," a professional officer of the AAUP may commit up to $250 from grant funds without approval of the grant committee.
Upon receipt of a request for a grant or a loan, the Director of Collective Bargaining will consult the CB grant committee. Proposed expenditures to support litigation will be referred for comment to the legal staff and General Counsel. Commitments of more than $10,000 in one year will be referred for comment to the Secretary-Treasurer. Commitments for more than one year shall only be made upon prior approval of the Executive Committee of the Council. In November of each year, Committee N will provide the Executive Committee a current list of grants and loans authorized for the year. Normally, no more than 50% of these funds will be committed prior to the Annual Meeting each year.
Grants and loans from the CB fund of the AAUP will be made for three purposes: (1) "to assist in defraying the extraordinary or unanticipated costs incurred by an organized chapter or unit; (2) to support an organizing campaign; or (3) to support a special project, such as a workshop or a special publication." Committee N is to supply the Executive Committee of the Council, annually during October, a statement of its priorities for the coming year, "including the expected use of the funds allocated by the Council to the grant and loan budget."
Agreements of organizational affiliation between non-AAUP faculty groups and the Association must be approved by the Council. Such agreements are carefully scrutinized by both the appropriate staff people and members of the Council and must incorporate all vital elements of AAUP policy. Voting rights at AAUP meetings will normally be proportional to dues payments, although services are available to all professors, regardless of membership affiliation.
Special services available to AAUP collective bargaining chapter include national staff or experienced CBC negotiating assistance, legal aid, political advice and assistance specially adapted to bargaining needs, and a CB Information Center which provides the following forms of help:
- The AAUP Collective Bargaining Newsletter, issued five times a year, publishes calendars of coming events, information about recent CB campaigns, activities, election results, chapter contract highlights, agendas for CBC meetings, news about lawsuits and court decisions involving bargaining issues, and Association news.
- A Clause Finder, containing examples of AAUP CB contracts with all types of institutions, can be consulted or specific sections ordered at only a few cents per page.
- A Clearinghouse File contains information, available to members, on such topics as "accountability," "agency shop issues," "organizing," "negotiating," and "legal decisions."
- A Contract File contains copies of the majority of current AAUP CB chapter contracts, available for perusal.
- Training Workshops are offered periodically for interested parties.
- Arbitration Abstracts, treating higher education arbitration awards in terms of twenty-six categories, such as agency fees, dismissal, fringe benefits, workload, etc., are continuously added to the AAUP data base.
- A Financial Analysis of an academic institution, using audits and tax statements, can be provided, "often revealing assets and sources of funds hidden in the kinds of financial statements usually issued to faculties and the public."
- A CBC Emergency Contingency Fund, providing grants and loans for unforeseen problems, financed by regular per capita payments.
- Staff Visits to AAUP bargaining chapters, made as requested, and used for on-the-spot contract analysis, assistance with negotiations or work actions, help with membership campaigns, or support for grievances.
- Instantaneous Transmission of documents from the Washington Office to CB chapters is available via computer hookup.
- Special Publications are issued from time to time. See, for example, the November-December 1987 issue of Academe, devoted almost entirely to collective bargaining.
Joint Ventures
Since 1974 the AAUP has permitted some of its chapters to enter into collective bargaining contracts in partnership with other faculty organizations. For over a decade the Association kept altering its policies regarding these joint ventures. Originally the General Secretary was empowered to approve such affiliations; later the authority to grant approval was shifted to the Council.
In 1987 Committee N issued a "Policy on Joint Affiliations." Still awaiting Council action as of June 1988, it distinguishes among two separate classes of joint affiliations. Joint Ventures of local chapters in partnership with other national organizations, when approved by the General Secretary and ratified by the Council, must be in written accord with AAUP policies and include agreement "to promote the principles, standards, and policies of the Association." Prior to granting approval of a joint venture, the General Secretary must be "satisfied that the chapter has no reasonable expectation of winning independently in a representation election," and must both consult the Chairs of the ASC and the CBC and "attempt to determine the sentiment of the membership of the petitioning chapter." Organizational Affiliates, involving non-AAUP membership entities composed primarily of professional employees normally eligible for AAUP membership who desire to enter into CB partnership with the Association, must win the approval of the General Secretary and the Council and adhere to the same AAUP standards as the JVs.
The AAUP, by written agreement, will rebate up to sixty percent of the full active member dues paid by members of join venture CB organizations, who will have voting rights in the Association of the total obligation; beyond this point full voting privileges accrue. Members of organizational affiliates must remit AAUP dues equal to twenty per cent of the amount paid by active members of the Association, but no proportional voting rights are here extended; full voting rights will, of course, result from the payment of full active member dues. Members of both the JVs and the APs will receive all regular AAUP publications and other benefits as specified in the applicable agreement.
Committee O on Organization
The Constitution of the Association requires that "reappointment and redistricting of the membership" take place "not less than once each decade." Committee O surveys the membership, recommends district boundaries and membership composition to the Council, which in turn proposes the boundaries of the new districts to the Annual Meeting. Committee O also handles all other proposals which purport to affect the structure of the Association.
Committee R on Government Relations
For many years the AAUP has been the "voice of the profession" to key officials in the legislative and executive branches of government in America, at all levels. The Association's Director of Government Relations, Dr. Alfred D. Sumberg, and his Assistant Director, while working in Washington with Members of Congress, Senators and representatives of the executive branch to advance the goals and principles of the AAUP, also maintain a network of consultants and supporters among Association members nationwide. These professors not only reflect campus sentiment and gather information about national, state, and local political issues, but also stand ready to add their individual voices to discussions of important political issues involving higher education.
The basic policy of the Association "on Professors and Political Activity" appears on pages 33-34 of the Redbook. After citing examples of restrictions on political participation by professors at a diversity of higher education institutions, and following a brief recapitulation of the relevant features of the federal Hatch Act, the Redbook policy statement recommends that campus authorities publish regulations governing the political activity of faculty members which are consistent with basic AAUP principle regarding the rights and responsibilities of citizens, effective service as professors, leaves of absence, and reductions of workloads.
Committee R, formed by the Council in 1958, meets twice a year, in November and February. Currently it comprises eight members (including the President of the AAUP), two consultants, and the chairs of the ASC and CBC as invited participants. At its two formal gatherings, Committee R formulates a government relations agenda for the Association, plans and critiques work by its staff to carry out its programs, and discusses strategy and tactics. During the year it furnishes authoritative speakers to testify before congressional committees and to present the AAUP's positions before other policy making groups. Through its staff it periodically circulates issues of AAUP Legislative News and sends out frequent "Legislative Alerts" to members of the Association's Congressional Network. It provides daily updates of national legislative activity on a toll-free AAUP telephone "hotline."
As the chair of Committee R stated in his annual report for 1987 "Two factors influence the development of the AAUP's annual government relations agenda. One is an historical commitment to equal educational opportunity; therefore we support those federal programs that promote opportunities for students. The second is a commitment to assist faculty in their roles as teachers, researchers, and citizens; therefore we support those federal programs that encourage faculty to carry out their professional responsibilities and recognize their rights as members of the academic and general communities."
In recent years AAUP members have participated in efforts to prevent or alleviate cuts in federal spending for such programs as guaranteed student loans, national direct student loans, Pell grants, and student work-study payments, as well as such agencies as the Library of Congress, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and the National Institutes of Health. In coalitions with other interested parties, the AAUP has won notable success not only in fighting efforts to gut the programs and agencies mentioned but also in the struggles to eliminate from the McCarren-Walter Act of 1958 provisions used to justify withholding visas from foreign visitors to the United States because of disagreement with their published ideas or their political associations, and to pass the 1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act, which overturned that portion of the Supreme Court's Grove City decision that limited the coverage of federal civil rights, rehabilitation, and age discrimination laws to specific institutional programs or departments, rather than apply them to an entire institution. Still underway are efforts to pass legislation to rectify the damage of the 1980 Supreme Court Yeshiva decision. Association representatives also continue to participate in discussions with others who also wish to improve the retirement provisions of the Age Discrimination Employment Act, to update the federal minimum wage law, and to minimize federal restrictions on faculty research. On occasion the AAUP has sponsored "faculty--administrator--legislator seminars," at which representatives of these three groups are brought together in a "retreat" setting to exchange views and perceptions about higher education in relation to government.
A regular format has developed for Annual Meetings held in Washington, D. C. that includes and "AAUP Government Relations Day." Following an orientation for Government Relations Day participants on Tuesday evening, AAUP members gather early Wednesday in the Rayburn House Office Building for a breakfast at which the Henry T. Yost Congressional Recognition Award is presented to a member of the House of Representatives who has compiled a distinguished record in support of higher education. Then, Association members visit representatives and senators throughout the day for the purpose of discussing matters of mutual interest. During the afternoon time is allocated for a reception at which a second Yost award is presented to a deserving U.S. senator.
When the Annual Meeting is held outside the nation's capital, as at Los Angeles in 1987, the format is likely to include workshops and panels oriented to state issues and lobbying mechanics, in addition to discussions of national higher education policies and developments. for professors who wish to be effective in government relations at the state level, the Association furnishes an "AAUP Guide to Action: A Handbook on Lobbying at the State Capitol," now available in a revised edition. Moreover, the Director of Government Relations in the Washington office regularly attends meeting of such organizations as the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislators to maintain contacts at the state level and to monitor developments.
Committee T on College and University Government
In General
Professors may adhere closely as individuals to high professional standards of conduct, and may even exhibit concern for the conditions and objectives of learning on their campuses, but this alone is insufficient. In order to fulfill their obligations to exercise academic responsibility commensurate with their claims to academic freedom and rights to aspire to a privileged tenured status they must make vigorous and conscientious use of opportunities to participate in institutional governance. Committee T was established at the third Annual Meeting of the Association to consider and report on "the place and functions of faculties in university government and administration," and it has endured ever since as one of the most active and important units in the AAUP.
Committee T (1) gathers information about the extent and methods of faculty participation in campus governance, and (2) formulates statements of principle applicable to such activity. It also (3) initiated investigations and mediations in instances where proper faculty-administration relationships were alleged not to exist. (AAUP Bulletin, May 1965, pp. 170-72.)
Studies based on questionnaires submitted periodically to chapters, and in-house rating scales devised to characterize the status of governance on particular campuses, have in the past enabled Committee T representatives to speak with authority on faculty participation in institutional decision-making. AAUP members and other interested parties should consult the Redbook," for guidance in governance matters.
The basic statement on "Government of Colleges and Universities," formulated jointly by the AAUP, the American council on Education, and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, reflects over two decades of "mutual understanding" regarding this subject by faculty, administrative, and board leaders throughout America. This statement is so important that excerpts from it follow:
When an educational goal has been established, it becomes the responsibility primarily of the faculty to determine appropriate curriculum and procedures of student instruction....
When ... external requirements [such as legislative acts or church decrees] influence course content and [the] manner of instruction or research, they impair the educational effectiveness of the institution....
[Faculty should] have a voice in the determination of [budget] ... priorities....
The selection of a chief administrative officer should follow upon cooperative search by the governing board and the faculty.... He should have the confidence of the board and the faculty.
The selection of academic deans and other chief academic officers should be the responsibility of the president with the advice of and in consultation with the appropriate faculty.
Determinations of faculty status [should be] normally based on the recommendations of the faculty groups involved....[This includes] selection and promotion and the granting of tenure. Joint action should also govern dismissals.
The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process....
The faculty sets the requirements for the degrees ... [and] determines when the requirements have been met....
The chairman or head of a department ... should be selected either by departmental election or by appointment following consultation with members of the department and of related departments; appointments should normally be in conformity with department members' judgment....
Agencies for faculty participation in the government of the college or university should be established at each level where faculty responsibility is present. An agency should exist for the presentation of the views of the whole faculty.... (Redbook, pp. 119-24. At the 1988 Council meeting the chairman of the Committee T announced that a mechanism for effecting "governance audits" on campuses was being developed by the body.)
Committee T has authored several AAUP policy pronouncements which clarify and expand the precepts found in the above joint statement. In 1972 the 58th Annual Meeting sanctioned a statement on "The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and Salary Matters;" in 1981 the 67th Annual Meeting endorsed a declaration of principles regarding "Faculty Participation in the Selection, Evaluation, and Retention of Administrators;" and in 1983 Committee T itself approved for publication a position paper on "Governance Standards in Institutional Mergers and Acquisitions." (Redbook, pp. 130-33, 125-27, and 115-20.)
The Selection, Evaluation, and Retention of Administrators
AAUP policy stipulated that in the search for a president, the faculty and governing board should both play a "primary role." If both bodies participate jointly on the search committee, "the number from each constituency should reflect both the primacy of faculty concerns and the range of other groups, including students, that have a legitimate claim to some involvement." No candidate for institutional president should "be chosen over the objections of the faculty" representatives in the search process.
The composition of a search committee to select an administrator below the presidential level "should reflect the extent of legitimate faculty interest in the position." The faculty component of the committee "should be chosen by the faculty of the unit or by a representative body of the faculty." The president should "not choose a person over the reasoned opposition of the faculty."
Academic administrators, including presidents, should have their performances evaluated periodically, "with faculty of the unit accorded the primary voice." The reviewing authority should publish a summary of the results of the evaluation, "including a statement of actions taken as a result of the review." Decisions about the retention or non-retention of administrators should be arrived at stated intervals and "should be based on institutionalized ... procedures which include significant faculty involvement," and in the case of presidents should include "an assessment of the level of confidence in which he or she is held by the faculty." Academic administrators should "be protected from arbitrary removal by procedures through which their rights and the interests of various constituencies are adequately safeguarded." (Redbook, pp. 125-27.)
Institutional Budgeting
The 1966 statement on institutional governance (Redbook, pp. 119-24) declares that professors should have access to budgetary information and that faculty members should participate in the budgeting process to the extent of establishing faculty salary policies and in dealing with those areas of institutional life for which they have primary responsibility. According to the authors of College and University Budgeting: An Introduction for Faculty and Academic Administrators (published at Washington, D.C. by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, 1984), budgets serve (1) to set priorities regarding institutional activities; (2) "as a control mechanism regulating the flow of resources to the activities in accordance with institutional objectives;" (3) as a contractual "summary of commitments made by the funding agency and the recipient of those funds;" (4) as a means by which budgetary units communicate their objectives and compete for funds with other such units; and (5) as a reflection of "the results of negotiations over what activities should be funded and at what levels."
Factors limiting faculty involvement in the budget process include the overlapping of budget cycles, number of layers of review in the budget process, economic and political climate at moments of decision, and degree of turnover of faculty representatives on budget committees. But in times of fiscal crisis particularly, and in dealing with the chronic (and sometimes justifiable) administrative quest for flexibility, faculty representation in the budget process is essential for good institutional governance. (Academe, March-April 1984, pp. 25-32.)
Mergers, Absorptions, and Financial Exigency
The basic AAUP position on institutional problems resulting from financial exigency calls for "early, careful, and meaningful faculty involvement in decisions relating to the reduction of instructional and research programs." Professors should have "the primary responsibility" of determining where reductions should take place, and those whose work promises "to be adversely affected should have a right to be heard." Tenure rights should be protected, although an early retirement program advantageous to senior faculty members may be utilized if the latter are agreeable to it. When the dismissal of professors is unavoidable "because of a demonstrably bona fide financial exigency" and when "all feasible alternatives to termination of appointments should have been pursued," the faculty or "an appropriate faculty body" should have the primary responsibility for "determining where within the overall academic terminations of appointment may occur," and for "determining the individuals whose appointments are to be terminated." (For detailed guidance about how this process should work, see the Redbook, pp. 23-24, 128-29, 131.) "At institutions experiencing major threats to their continued financial support, the faculty should be informed as early and as specifically as possible of significant impending financial difficulties." Before a condition of financial exigency is declared, "the burden will rest on the administration to prove the existence and the extent of the condition." Those likely to suffer thereby should receive due process, as described in AAUP guidelines. (For the utilization of AAUP guidelines regarding financial exigency by federal judges and authors of law journal articles, see Redbook, pp. 192-93, and Academe, May-June 1984, p. 22 and especially Sept.-Oct. 1986, p. 4.)
The 1970's guidelines proved inadequate for the case of the George Peabody College for Teachers, which suffered an absorption into Vanderbilt University, with entire departments and programs abolished and over twenty tenured professors dismissed. The Peabody experience forced reconsideration of the AAUP's policy on financial exigency in cases of mergers or absorptions. At the Association's sixty-fifth Annual Meeting held in June 1979, the AAUP chapter of Peabody College submitted a proposal that would have required the organization to endorse the principle that the tenure rights of faculty members were not abrogated when programs or departments were transferred from one institution to another or terminated "in anticipation of a transfer of these responsibilities," and the further principle that when such transfers created "redundancies,... the losses should bear equally on all units of institutions involved." The Annual Meeting voted to commit the proposal to Committee A for study and directed that committee to report back to the Council in November; meanwhile it both reaffirmed the AAUP's policy "of full faculty involvement in decisions that may lead to the reduction or termination of academic programs" and asked Committee T to prepare "model 1979, pp. 400-01.)
The promised Committee A study was not ready in November. A majority of the Council voted to approve and the Annual Meeting endorsed the following policy, still in effect:
"1. The transferral of instructional and/or programmatic responsibility from one academic unit of one institution to one or more units of another does not abrogate the tenure rights of any of the faculty members involved.
"2. The termination of instructional or programmatic responsibility of one academic unit in anticipation of a transfer of these responsibilities to units of another institution does not abrogate the tenure rights of any of the faculty members involved.
"3. When redundancies occur as a result of the transfer or consolidation of programmatic and/or instructional responsibilities, there shall be full faculty participation, in accordance with AAUP regulations, to determine whether tenured faculty are to be terminated, whether such terminations are necessary, and how to allocate any losses fairly and equitably among all units of the institutions involved." (Academe, March 1980, p. 89, and Nov. 1980, pp. 383-84, and Dec. 1980, p. 419.)
The chairman of Committee T announced that his group was prepared to join with Committee A in formulating and issuing a "statement on faculty rights and prerogatives in merger situations." With this stimulus, a draft statement was produced by Committees A and T for publication in Academe in April 1981: "(1) the faculty of each institution participate in decisions affecting academic programs and faculty status, and (2) the principles of academic freedom and tenure be safeguarded and the terms of faculty appointment be honored as fully as possible in any new institutional arrangement," the statement offered a lengthy discussion of the faculty role and of various situations. "The essential point," the statement declared, was before decisions or commitments to affiliate have been made, or before any decisions on curtailment of programs ... become final." (Academe, April 1981, pp. 83-85.)
A merger of two relatively healthy institutions, neither of which were in a condition of financial exigency, seemed, therefore, to be adequately covered by existing AAUP policy. But "a different challenge to faculty rights" occurred when an economically strong institution absorbed one which appeared to be in financial distress. Here an "unfortunate consequence" was likely to be "fewer total positions," with the bulk of the discontinued positions coming from the faculty of the weaker institution or program. "Even so, the faculty members who would otherwise be displaced-- and particularly those who had attained tenure within the institution or program which is being absorbed." Each terminated professor ought to have "a hearing before a faculty body, assistance in relocation, retraining, and adequate notice or severance salary." (Academe, April 1981, pp. 84-85.)
A year later Committee A approved a more elaborate statement "On Institutional Mergers and Acquisitions" for publication in Academe. Despite it insistence on full faculty involvement "in negotiations affecting faculty status and the academic programs at both institutions," this document drew strong criticism for its recommendation that if an acquiring institution did not find it "feasible" to absorb the tenured faculty of the acquired institution, it should give "preferential consideration" to those professors in hiring new faculty in the future, even if "circumstances" prevented "less than full recognition of tenure," in which case a probationary position might be offered. Professors tenured at the acquired school who believe that the obligations of "preferential consideration," "suitable position," or "adequate severance salary" had not been met were "entitled to review," but the burden of proof would be on them. (Academe, March-April 1982, 1a-3a.)
To its critics, the draft policy seemed vague and unenforceable. Moreover, one commentator argued eloquently, if adopted by the Association it would open a wide loophole in that organization's traditional tenure policy, which was its "stock-in-trade." Another critic termed the proposed policy change "a clear invitation to an acquiring institution to dismiss any professor, tenured or otherwise, coming to it from a weaker institution which it has absorbed, despite the existence of a prior contractual obligation, and despite the lack of proof that the absorbing institution cannot afford, without entering itself into a state of financial exigency, to honor that tenure contract." (Ibid., p. 4a-7a; N. Ferris to W. Metzger, July 4, 1982.)
The struggle over the wording of a policy that would adequately address the problem of mergers or absorptions in cases of alleged financial exigency found its way into The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 2, 1982). But, despite continuing concern "that the Association lacks a formally adopted policy in this area," Committees A and T have chosen to stick with whatever applications of existing policies might be made to the peculiarities of merger or absorption situations, rather than to struggle further in the direction of a more elaborate statement on that subject.
Ralph Brown of the Yale University Law School, a long time member of Committee A and a former president of the Association, wrote that financial exigency "describes crisis circumstances when it becomes permissible to break contracts." The survival of an institution "as a whole" must therefore be in danger "before terminations can be effected." (Ralph S. Brown, Jr., "Financial Exigency," AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1976, pp. 5-16.) "Unfortunately," one administrator has argued, "the diversity of institutions of higher education probably precludes a widely accepted universal definition of financial exigency. For example, a definition based on imminent bankruptcy, though probably suitable for a private college, would not be appropriate for a public institution.... It is most likely, therefore, that each institution of learning must formulate its own definition of financial strategy," in the course of which "professors and administrators alike would be well advised to adhere to the basic ideas implicit in the AAUP guidelines." (James C. Garland, "What Financial Exigency Means, " Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1983, pp. 24-26. See also pp. 7 and 10-24 of this issue devoted to "Hard Times: An AAUP Task Force Responds to Economic Realities in Higher Education," and Academe, March-April 1983, pp. 7a-8a and May-June 1984, p. 22 and Sept.-Oct. 1986, p. 4.)
In a series of Committee A investigations of cases in which the issue was raised by higher education administrators as a justification for terminating the employment of tenured professors, the ad hoc investigating committees determined that there was in fact no "demonstrable bona fide exigency." Preferring to employ a common sense evaluation of readily observable facts to judge, every one of the ad hoc investigating committees applied the burden of proof test to administrative assertions, and each instance found that the existence of financial exigency had not been demonstrated. Institutional resources were more than adequate to support the retention of tenured faculty members. "Faculty consultation at various stages of the process was either inadequate or nonexistent" Procedural flaws typified almost all of these cases. Thus the historical record seems to confirm that "the test of existence of financial exigency," as a former Association which, unlike states of mind, can be evaluated with considerable confidence. (David Fellman, "The Association's Evolving Policy on Financial Exigency," Academe, May-June 1984, pp. 14-22)
Faculty Representation on Governing Boards
The AAUP has as yet taken no position regarding direct faculty representation on governing boards. a joint subcommittee of Committees R and T has published a draft policy that recommends "the participation of the faculty through a systemwide faculty senate or its equivalent in consolidating governing board states or a general faculty advisory committee in coordinating board states. The members of the faculty advisory body should be selected by the faculty according to procedures determined by the faculty." In addition, "the presence of faculty members on ad hoc and standing committees of the statewide boards may also serve the purpose of representing faculty interests and interpreting the needs of faculty to the statewide boards." (Academe, May-June 1984, p. 16a. See also Robert Berdahl and Samuel K. Gove, "Governing Higher Education: Faculty Roles on State Boards," May-June, pp. 21-24.)
Higher Education Reform
In recent years, traditional faculty governance prerogatives have been challenged by a myriad of assaults from advocates of greater "efficiency," added "accountability," better "assessment," and management "by objectives" in academia. Some of these studies were (1) "Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education," published by the National Institute of Education (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 24, 1984, p. 35 et seq.); (2) "Integrity in the College Curriculum," a report by the Association of American Colleges (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 13, 1985, p. 12 et seg.); (3) "A call for Change in Teacher Education," a report by the National Commission for Excellence in Education (The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 1985, p. 13 et seg.); (4) "Access to Quality Undergraduate Education," a report by the SREB's Commission for Educational Quality (The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 3, 1985); (5) "Higher Education and the American Resurgence," sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (excerpted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 18, 1985, p.17 et seq.); "Tomorrow's Teachers: A Report if the Holmes Group," (The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 1986, p.27 et seq.); (7) "Transforming the State Role in Undergraduate Education: Time for a Different View," a report by the Education Commission of the States (The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 1986, p. 13 et seq.); (8) "College: The Undergraduate Experience in America," a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (summarized in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 5, 1986, p. 16 et seq.) and (9) "To Secure the Blessings of Liberty: A Report of the National Commission on the Role and Future of State Colleges and Universities" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 12, 1986, p. 29 et seq.). Numerous magazine and newspaper articles, as well as best seller books like Allen Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), added to the widely held impression that American higher education was in a state of crisis and that professors collectively bore a large share of the responsibility.
From the "better schools" proposals by then Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who publicly attacked faculty tenure, to a statement entitled "Governance of State Colleges and Universities: Achieving Institutional Mission," issued in November 1984 by the National Association of State Colleges and Universities, self-appointed educational "reformers" sought, in the words of the chairman from Committee T, "a considerable extension of governance by administrative directive and a significant reduction in the faculty role." Alleging a "changing social, economic, and political context" in U.S. higher education, the AASCU statement advocated administrative usurpation of longstanding professorial responsibility for "faculty status and related matters," and even in regard to the curriculum, where faculty status was still conceded, the AASCU position no longer stipulated that the faculty's judgment should be accepted by the governing board and the president "except in rare instances and for compelling reasons." Rather faculty should be guided in such matters "by the directives of the board of trustees and the president." (Academe, May-June 1985, p. 60.)
This was only one of a series of indictments of what William Bennett, soon to become the U.S. Commissioner of Higher Education, called "a failure of nerve and faith" on the part of professors and administrators, which had resulted in such people having "no clear sense of their educational mission and no conception of what a graduate of their institutions ought to know or be." It was time, it seemed, for higher education policy to be removed from the grasp of its votaries. Reform would have to come from elected officials, business and community leaders, and parents. (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 28, 1984, p. 16 et seq., and Feb. 20, 1985, p. 24.)
State legislators expressed a view that education was "too important to be left solely to the educators." Some governors agreed: under the chairmanship of Tennessee's Alexander, the National Governor's Association launched an "Action Plan for Attaining Educational Excellence" to introduce "a market orientation to the educational enterprise." Announcements of the project were replete with references to "producers and consumers" of the educational "product" and sound "management practices." Those seeking better "assessment approaches and techniques ... to assure accountability" and "a cost-effective delivery system" ought, it was said, to examine "the military's nationwide experience" in such matters. (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 3, 1986, p. 79 et seq. and 1985 press release announcing the "Action Plan.")
Some members of governing boards evidenced similar dispositions "to assume more direct responsibility for academic decision making." At the 1985 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges, speakers repeatedly declared "that unless faculty members began to make substantial progress soon on curricular reform, the role of trustees may well go beyond asking questions." A perception that professors were "unwilling" to reform was largely responsible for activism not only among trustees but also among politicians and large segments of the general public. (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 20, 1985, p. 1. and 18-19.)
Calling various published studies "a most serious indictment of higher education and of the entire academic profession," the President of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities used the AAUP's own bi-monthly journal to point out that every issue being discussed by the critics of the deficiencies of the nation's campuses was "primarily within the domain of college faculties." It was professors "who should be leading the parade in determining academic policies.... It is leadership in an era of reform we are talking about, and it is the faculty's responsibility to assert it. Otherwise the political community will have the parade all to itself. And our faculties will be assigned specific positions in the parade and instructed how to march!" (Academe, Sept-Oct., 1986, p. 41. See also Hugh Hawkins, "Curricular Reform in Historical Perspective." AHA Perspectives, Jan. 1986, pp. 21-22.)
Committee V on Junior and Community Colleges
Although this committee has been inactive at the national level, state conferences activated "V" committees to bridge gaps between two-year and four-year faculties and to gain recognition of AAUP standards.
Committee W on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession
Background
The first Committee W was established in 1918 when a scarcity of qualified male professors in American colleges and universities, caused by World War I, led to the employment of a considerable number of women. Meanwhile, the rapid contemporary expansion of fields which traditionally utilized many women, such as music, education, home economics, nursing, and librarianship, added to the influx. And the success of the women's suffrage movement appeared to provide women professors with added confidence. According to a 1921 Committee W report, the advent of an unprecedented percentage of women professors had not brought about "the evils that had been feared." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, p. 215.)
Committee W, however, was dissolved in 1928. Other AAUP committees have become dormant without being abolished. But the reasons for the reactivation of this body in 1970 are quite evident. Within several years after the establishment by President John Kennedy in December 1961 of the first national Commission on the Status of Women, almost every state created a similar commission, in order to plan and provide for reforms in the status and treatment of women. Female activism not only led to the establishment of such groups as NOW (in 1966), but also rapidly spread to the campuses, with disciplinary and institutional reports on the status of women faculty members proliferating, along with feminist causes, publications, and lawsuits. (Ibid., pp. 215-17.)
During its first year of resurrection, Committee W initiated an anti-nepotism policy for the Association, published a study showing underrepresentation of women among AAUP officers, as well as staff and committee and Council members, and began efforts to draft regulations on part-time faculty appointments, maternity leave, and affirmative action plans for colleges and universities, efforts which resulted eventually in AAUP policies in all three categories. (Ibid., pp. 215-20, and Redbook, pp. 52-62, 179-80, and 105-12.)
The fifty-seventh Annual Meeting unanimously approved an anti-nepotism statement originated by Committee W and endorsed by Committee A, entitled "Faculty Appointment and Family Relationship." While recognizing "The propriety of institutional regulations which would set reasonable restrictions on an individual's capacity to function as judge or advocate in specific situations involving members of his or her immediate family," especially those in which "a direct benefit" was a possible consequence of such participation, the AAUP nevertheless opposed "the proscription" of members of an immediate family to serve as colleagues, and urged an end to all such policies and practices. (Redbook, p. 116. See AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1972, pp. 31-34, for an article on "The Legal Status of Antinepotism Regulations" by Heather Sigworth.)
Prodded by Committee W leaders, the 1971 Annual Meeting also passed a resolution reaffirming the Association's "commitment to full equality of opportunity for women in employment and in professional activities," calling for institutional cooperation with government agencies in developing "affirmative action programs directed toward the elimination of discriminatory practices and their consequences," and requesting members, chapters, and conferences "to initiate and support local investigations of the status of women in their institutions," leading to "full equality of women." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, p. 178.)
Affirmative Action
Finally, the 1971 Annual Meeting called on the Council to develop "measures, including censure," against schools "practicing any sort of discrimination ... on the basis of age, sex, race, color, religion, national origin, or marital status." The Council responded by establishing a Committee on Discrimination chaired by Beatrice G. Konheim, which soon produced some detailed recommendations. First, it desired Committee A to "make explicit" what appeared implicit in past Association statements, "that freedom from discrimination, like academic freedom, is essential to the free search for truth and its free exposition." This might be accomplished by taking the following concrete steps. Committee A ought to recommend that the Association's Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure should be amended to declare that "Appointments will be made on the basis of the prospective fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers and will be without prejudice with respect to race, sex, religion, or national origin." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, pp. 177-83 and Summer 1972, pp. 160-70.)
Second, the Committee on Discrimination had recommended, and Committee A had agreed, that the tenth of the Recommended Institutional Regulations, setting forth due process for non-tenured faculty members alleging that decisions not to reappoint them were based on consideration violative of their academic freedom, be amended to provide the same rights of due process to a probationary faculty member who alleged that considerations based significantly upon race, sex, religion, or national origin contributed to a decision not to offer reappointment. This would now be Association policy. (Ibid.)
Third, the Discrimination Committee believed "that the Association should offer further guidance in the matter of institutional procedure for processing grievances," dealt with in general fashion in the fifteenth of the Recommended Institutional Regulations, to include allegations of discrimination in cases other than those involving dismissal or non-reappointment. (Ibid.)
Finally, the committee advised institutions to make explicit their commitment to equal opportunity, publicize faculty vacancies as widely as possible, charge faculty committees with researching "whether patterns of unwarranted discrimination exist," take care that "effective institutional grievance procedures "lent themselves to affirmative action, including "efforts to redress the effects of past discrimination," and (while avoiding the imposition of statistical quotas) provide advantages in the faculty selection process "for previously excluded groups." (Ibid., pp. 162-63.)
Spurred by Annual Meeting resolutions calling for colleges and universities to make "energetic and systematic" efforts at affirmative action, giving such plans "the highest priority," the AAUP continued to adopt Committee W recommendations during the 1970s. At the 60th Annual Meeting in 1974, a statement on "Leaves of Absence for Child-bearing, Child-rearing, and Family Emergencies" became Association policy. Such absences were deemed analogous to already-existing short term "paid absences for illness or temporary disability" for men, or to longer-term male leaves of absence "for public or private service outside the institution." An option for child-rearing parents should be "temporarily reduced workload." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1974, pp. 1-3, 143 and 164-65; and Redbook, pp. 96-104 and 179-80.)
Economic Benefits
Committee Z eventually provided a crucial weapon for those who sought salary equity for women in academia, when as a result of an Annual Meeting resolution in 1973 it began to lay the groundwork for publishing salary data in its yearly compensation report by gender as well as by rank. The first differentiation of this kind appeared in the August 1977 AAUP Bulletin and was continued thereafter.
Another issue first raised by Committee W was the disparity of TIAA-CREF pension benefits between men and women. Asserting a conviction that "the standard of equal pay for equal work requires the payment of equal retirement benefits to women and men with the same employment records," the Committee W chairperson announced a determination to force an alteration of the retirement plan of the TIAA, the assigned carrier for many AAUP members, as discriminating against women. Both the Council and the 60th Annual Meeting endorsed the concept of equal monthly retirement benefits for men and women, and William W. Van Alstyne, AAUP President, argued this position in letters to the Secretary of Labor and the Chairman of TIAA-CREF. (AAUP Bulletin, June 1973, pp. 173-74; Aug. 1974, p. 162; and Dec. 1975, pp. 316-21.)
By 1976 Committee W held that the only solution to the discrimination against women in TIAA-CREF pension plans was "the use of sex-neutral mortality tables, the so-called 'unisex' approach. A subcommittee report buttressed this claim. At the October Council meeting Association officers were instructed by January 1977 to start paying pension benefits to female employees of the AAUP equal to "those of comparable males." During the following year while continuing to press the Department of Labor for unisex retirement regulations, the Association began filing amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs seeking sexual equality in pension benefits. And in November 1978 the Council endorsed a Committee W resolution that called for "no differentiation on the basis of gender" not only in retirement benefits but also in access and payment rates for professors enrolled "in employee-related insurance plans." (AAUP Bulletin, Oct. 1976, pp. 339-42; Feb. 1977, pp. 25-26; Sept. 1978, pp. 177-78; March 1979, p. 155; and Oct. 1979, p. 414.)
Even after the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission joined the struggle and courts began to decide in favor of the AAUP's position in cases involving individual employers, it appeared that only action by the U.S. Congress would finally produce a favorable settlement with TIAA-CREF. Hence AAUP representatives offered expert testimony in congressional hearings on a suitable bill. In the end, however, legislation proved unnecessary, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in regard to a case in which the AAUP had been an intervening party, that TIAA-CREF must provide equal pension benefits to women and men retroactive to May 1, 1980. (Academe, March 1980, p, 95; Oct. 1981, p. 331; Sept.-Oct. 1982, pp. 24-26; March-April 1983, pp. 10a-11a; and Sept-Oct. 1985, p. 5a.)
Other Anti-Discrimination Measures
The Association continued meanwhile to oppose other forms of sexual discrimination. Invaluable assistance came from the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, which extended the protections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to employees of educational institutions, and from Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, which extended provisions of the 1963 Equal Pay Act to require the same pay for executive, administrative, and professional men and women "doing substantially equal work requiring substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, under similar working conditions in the same establishment." (AAUP Bulletin, Sept. 1972, p. 333.)
In June 1975 the 61st Annual Meeting reaffirmed "without audible dissent" the AAUP's four-year-old commitment "to use its procedures and to take measures, including censure, against colleges and universities practicing any sort of discrimination ... on the basis of age, sex, physical handicap, race, color, religion, national origin, or marital status." The Association on staff was "directed actively to look out for, develop, and report to Committee A for action, selected cases of discrimination, especially against women." In October 1976 the Council voted to add "sexual or affectional alleged preference" to the above categories. (See AAUP Bulletin, Aug. 1975, p. 109, and Feb. 1977, p. 24.)
Committee A established a subcommittee in 1976 "to work out guidelines for processing of discrimination cases." This subcommittee published its report, "On Processing Complaints of Discrimination on the Basis of Sex," in the August 1977 AAUP Bulletin (pp. 231-36), and after an interval for criticism form interested parties it was approved by the Council as Association policy. (AAUP Bulletin, March 1978, p. 56.)
Objections to "reverse discrimination and quotas," arising out of "discretionary preference for women and minority" professors, soon surfaced, with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare accused of forcing hiring and tenure decisions based on the proportion of a department that met specified sexual or racial "goals," rather than based on the individual "merits" of candidates. An article in the AAUP Bulletin questioning whether HEW was not guilty of "gross interference in academic judgments," thus endangering traditional faculty governance prerogatives, and which urged the AAUP to affirm "the autonomy of educational institutions over matters of standards and curriculum," attracted a spate of indignant rejoinders and drew the comment from Committee W stalwarts that the cost of 'getting the feds off our backs' was "simply too great to permit complete institutional autonomy in this area." While conceding the desirability of simplifying record-keeping and cutting back on requirements for periodic reporting to federal agencies, these commentators advocated a strict audit process and "vigorous enforcement of federal and state anti-discrimination laws against offending colleges and universities. Thus enforcement would be both "more effective and less onerous" in terms of the trouble and expense of processing individual complaints. (AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1975, pp. 293-303; and Oct. 1976, pp. 326-32; and Academe, Dec. 1981, pp. 351-54.)
To assist institutions in formulating affirmative action guidelines, Committee W published with Council approval some "Recommended Procedures for Increasing the Number of Minority Persons and Women on College and University Faculties." Endorsing "the establishment of achievable goals" for affirmative action, this report suggested what these goals might be and how to meet and monitor them. (Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1982, pp. 15a-20a; and May-June 1982, p. 20a.)
Non-Tenure Track and Part-Time Appointments
One area that appeared ripe for reform was staffing procedures. "There is mounting evidence," resolved the 73rd Annual Meeting in June 1987, "that colleges and universities are seeking to meet affirmative action obligations by appointing women to faculty positions of lesser opportunity, award, and status than those occupied by men." To force women to settle for nontenure track and part-time billets was not "meaningful affirmative action." (Draft Action Minutes of 73rd Annual Meeting, July 8, 1987, p. 4.)
Recognizing from its inception that sexual discrimination and special difficulties of part-time professors were interrelated problems, Committee W stimulated discussion of the plight of that class of faculty members. Articles and correspondence in the AAUP Bulletin provided evidence "that female part-timers are discriminated against." (For example, see May 1978, pp. 70-77; Dec. 1978, pp. 305-15; Feb. 1979, pp. 82-87, and March 1980, pp. 71-76.)
A Committee A report published in 1979 entitled "Academic Freedom and Due Process for Faculty Members Who Serve Less Than Full Time" gathered existing AAUP policies on the subject and concluded that part-time teachers had the right to "the same academic freedom that teachers with tenure have." Two years later a Committee A report on "The Status of Part-Time Faculty" attempted comprehensively to discuss "The status, role, rights and privileges, and responsibilities of professors employed less than full-time. This document proposed "guidelines to assist colleges and universities in formulating policy relating to part-time members of the faculty." Ultimately published in the Association's compilation of Policy Documents, this report must not think they could "meet their obligations to provide equal employments opportunities by having a substantial number of female appointees on a part-time status which provides them with little or no opportunity for movement to full-time positions." But this was not exclusively a women's issue; it involved "faculty members of both sexes." The committee recommended that tenure be available to experienced part-timers; that their appointments not routinely be last-minute contingent hirings; that they receive ample notice of non-reappointment and access to grievance mechanisms; that they participate in course and curricular planning and serve on committees dealing with matters related to their work; that they be paid equitably; and that they have access to fringe benefits received by full-time faculty. (Academe, Feb.-March 1981, pp. 29-39; Redbook, pp. 52-62.)
In November 1985 a Council resolution reaffirming "the danger to academic freedom and tenure [of] the growing practice of replacing tenured faculty with temporary, part-time or other faculty ineligible for tenure" illustrated the professorate's continuing concern with the issue. This interest was further reflected in an entire issue of Academe (Jan.-Feb. 1986) which pointed out "that one-third of our teachers are now part-time," that tenure quotas of the early 1970's were being maintained in the mid-1980's and later by substituting temporary for probationary appointments, and that a drop in the percentage of tenured and tenure-track professors was creating serious pressures for those who inhabited those categories--through shortages of teachers qualified to offer upper division and graduate courses, through enhanced advising and governance loads, and through increasing demands for publication stemming in part from accreditation standards. As for the adverse impact on academic freedom, it appeared "self-evident." (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1985, p. 6a; and Jan.-Feb. 1986, pp. 11, 21, and 23-24.)
If the proliferation of part-time appointments was especially deleterious to the career ambitions of academic women, isolating them "from the mainstream of their institution and profession," as well as discriminating against them economically, non-tenure track appointments, also disproportionately occupied by women, were (according to a Committee W chairperson) "not even an option that should be available to all." This view was consistent with the unanimous stipulation of a Special Committee on Academic Personnel Ineligible for Tenure that "any person whom an institution appoints to a full-time teaching position should be treated as a candidate for tenure ..., no matter what rank or title he may be given by the institution." Hence "all full-time teachers, but no investigators, in the universities regardless of their titles should acquire tenure after a probationary period as provided for ... in the 1940 Statement." (Committee W Report, June 1987, p. 3; AAUP Bulletin, Autumn, 1966, pp. 280-82.)
A following report of a special Committee A subcommittee in 1969 stipulated that non-tenure-track teachers and investigators should have full academic freedom and that full-time teachers and investigators with regular faculty positions "should have the rights and privileges appropriate to their rank, including tenure or the eligibility for tenure after the appropriate probationary period." The subcommittee proposed that "any person whom an institution appoints to a full-time teaching position should be treated as a candidate for tenure ... no matter what rank or title he may be given by the institution." (Redbook, pp. 48-51.)
The 1971 Annual Meeting created a Special Committee on Non-tenured Faculty in "recognition of the need to give special consideration to their status and rights." In its report, this committee, while suggesting that "individual beneficiaries" of the work of Committee A were "preponderately (perhaps as much as three-quarters) non-tenured, and that other services of the Association, such as work of Committee Z and the legal staff, appeared primarily to benefit non-tenured faculty, the committee nevertheless identified additional areas in which the AAUP ought to increase its efforts in behalf of this category of teacher. First, "the Association should urgently pursue the question of due process to which non-tenured faculty members are entitled." This ought to be done "through a strengthening of the Academic Freedom Fund and/or through increased direct legal assistance. Through its publications the Association should inform professors of pertinent legal precedents, while at the chapter level "a concerted effort" should be made at each institution for adoption of specific provisions set forth in the AAUP's Procedural Standards and for adherence to additional standards:
(1) emphasizing the strong desirability of informing appointees of general criteria for tenure and promotion prior to or at the time of initial appointment; (2) indicating whether and to what extent these criteria may properly be changed as the conclusion of the probationary period draws near; (3) setting forth the right of the candidate to submit materials in support of his candidacy and to be informed of adverse materials that may have been lodged against him without his knowledge; (4) clarifying the extent and manner of participation by nontenured faculty members in setting general institutional, and perhaps departmental, standards on renewal of appointment and on tenure. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1972, pp. 156-59.)
In addition, the Special Committee recommended that "it should be made clear that nontenured faculty members ... are entitled fully to participate in the government of the institutions they serve." They should be "represented on faculty bodies charged with making recommendations on continuance and modification of academic programs in the context of retrenchment," on faculty grievance committees, and on hearing programs in the context of retrenchment," on faculty grievance committees, and on hearing committees which considered such matters as dismissals, alleged violations of academic freedom, and other controversial issues of faculty status. In 1973, however, the Committee changed its recommendation in a single respect: it suggested "the exclusion of non-tenured faculty from 'formal participation' in determining individual faculty status." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1972, pp. 157-58; and Summer 1973, p. 187.)
Tenure Quotas
In 1973, the Special Committee devoted most of its attention to tenure quotas, viewed in some quarters as a panacea for the serious economic problems anticipated in higher education. Opposing such quotas, "for they would supplant the vital criterion of merit with the artificial measure of an arbitrary percentage or range of percentages," the Committee warned that
what is likely to emerge from such a development would be disastrous: a settled and relatively secure faculty, numbering slightly more than half the profession, and gypsy-like tribe of permanently nontenured faculty moving from place to place, if they can avoid dropping out entirely, waiting for a senior colleague to retire or die or enter full-time administration. We know of no reasonable economy resulting from tenure quotas which would be worth this price. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1973, p. 186.)
Institutional flexibility, the Committee declared could "and should be retained through the raising of standards, ... not through the imposition of an artificial formula." To countenance any such solution to the current crisis would be to contribute to a "devaluation of the tenure system" itself, possibly leading to its eventual demise. Nor should extensions of the probationary period as set forth in the 1940 Statement be allowed, for the same reason. (Ibid.)
While agreeing with Committee A in its opposition to tenure quotas, Committee W urged "that in assessing an institution's tenure profile special attention should be given to achieving the diversity in a faculty which comes from the presence of women and minority group members." Moreover, the practice on many campuses of appointing women to non-tenure track positions was an "abuse of sound academic practice" and should be discontinued. For "people who function as regular and ongoing full-time faculty members, but who have no prospect of tenure, because of the way in which their position is defined," frequently lacked academic freedom, were unable fully to participate in academic governance, and were almost invariably deprived of just compensation for their services. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1974, pp. 160-61.)
In 1977 Committee A appointed a subcommittee to collect information on the subject, following which it offered recommendations which were ultimately published in an AAUP policy document. Observing that the pronounced increase in recent years of non-tenure track appointments was explained by administrators in terms of a need in uncertain times for staffing "flexibility," the subcommittee asked whether "If having some non-tenure track positions gives an institution some flexibility, will not having more such positions provide more flexibility?" And would not obliterating tenure entirely allow administrators maximum flexibility? (Redbook, pp. 40-48.)
The subcommittee found that debilitating uncertainty and lack of community with their colleagues characterized the lives of non-tenure track appointees. Citing Regulation 1(b) of the "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure," that referred to "special appointments clearly limited to a brief association with the institution, and reappointments of retired faculty members on special conditions," the subcommittee declared that an indefinitely renewable appointment did not comply with Regulation 1(b), nor did "a limited renewable appointment did not comply, either, for seven years was hardly a "brief" span of time. Nor did the many non-tenurable appointments made in such fields as English and Mathematics appear to arise out of "special" circumstances. Instead they provided a mechanism for employing mere "contract workers ... incapable of full and equal faculty membership irrespective of the nature of the service they have given and irrespective of the nature of the professional excellence of that service." Needing to "go hat in hand," annually, "indefinitely into the future, to ask if they may stay," they scarcely enjoyed academic freedom. Moreover the large proportion of such non-tenure track teachers on a single campus undermined academic freedom for the tenured faculty there, for, clearly, the independent and strong, and therefore of necessity large, group of tenured colleagues." Hence those who advocated or countenanced such non-tenure track appointments were "supporting practices which are inequitable, harmful to morale, and a threat to academic freedom." (Ibid., and also p. 22.)
In 1985 the Council resolved "that the AAUP take the lead in publishing the danger to academic freedom and tenure" of current administrative practices "of replacing tenured professors as they retire with faculty members on non-tenure track appointments." Following the publication of an issue of Academe devoted largely to the "predicament" of non-tenure track faculty members, in which Editor Paul Strohm observed that in many cases "the faculty has acquiesced in the proliferation" of such appointments and urged that AAUP chapters work "to deter" them, and in which the Chairman of Committee A described the trend as "ominous," a subcommittee of Committee A issued a "Report on Full-Time Non-Tenure-Track Appointments" designed to supersede the Redbook report bearing the same title and first published about a decade earlier. Noting that the practice of regularly funding or even increasing the proportion of non-tenure track positions had "remained a persistent phenomenon in American colleges and universities," the subcommittee warned "that the practice may well be on the way toward becoming entrenched." Moreover, "a disproportionate number" of these 'temporary' professors were women. (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1985, p. 6a; and Jan.-Feb. 1986 passim, especially pp. 6a and 43; and July-Aug. 1986, pp. 14a-15a.)
Delineating in considerable detail the adverse effects of non-tenure track appointments on the holders of such positions, as well as on "students and the learning process," and on "institutional morale and academic governance," and finally on "the future of the profession and condemning not only administrative officers pursuing economy and flexibility but also senior professors giving "tacit approval of the two-class system in hopes of maintaining and enhancing their own positions," the subcommittee declared that "for the sake of higher education, of academic freedom, and of the professional security ... of coming generations of scholars and their students, the abuse of these appointments should be stopped." As the Chair of Committee W emphasized, women, who disproportionately occupied non-tenure track positions, should work to oppose not only the continuance of such positions but also the very concept of such a "two-tiered system." (Academe, July-Aug. 1986, pp. 16a-19a; Committee W Report dated June 16, 1987.)
Sexual Harassment
During the November 1979 Council meeting, the Chair of Committee W reported that she had been asked to work on the problem of the sexual harassment of female faculty members. At the 1980 Annual Meeting she presented a resolution urging local AAUP chapters to labor on their campuses to develop and strengthen "policies which prohibit sexual harassment, providing effective mechanisms for complainants to seek redress, and assuring due process protections for those accused." (Academe, March 1980, p. 95; and Nov. 1980, pp. 390-91.)
Defining and condemning sexual harassment, Committee W authored a statement which was adopted by the Council in 1985 as Association policy. "Applicable Procedures" were proposed for registering and resolving complaints. The statement declared that "all members of the academic community should support the principle that sexual harassment represents a failure in ethical behavior and that sexual exploitation of professional relationships will not be condoned. (Academe, March-April 1983, pp. 15a-16a, and November 1984, p. 15a; and Redbook, pp. 113-15.)
Although, as Mary Gray has pointed out, few plaintiffs have won faculty discrimination cases in recent years, the Association remains committed to the pursuit of legal remedies for violations of anti-discrimination laws whenever litigation appears to promise success. (footnote, manuscript p. 54). Meanwhile, it proceeds on other fronts, publicizing its policies, urging action on campuses, including use of grievance procedures, bringing recent scholarship on the status and accomplishments of faculty women to the attention of the professorate (see, for example, Academe, July-Aug. 1987, pp. 51-52, and Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 47-48) and, of course, continuing to list current faculty appointments and salaries by school and by sex in its annual Committee Z compilations.
One Association member who was one of the first to recognize that the social circumstances of the 1970s made "collective bargaining a new and powerful vehicle for remedying sex discrimination on campus," was Georgina M. Smith. Noting in an important article in the AAUP Bulletin that non-discrimination legislation applied to unions as well as to employers, she detailed how at Rutgers University faculty women had worked through their AAUP collective bargaining chapter to obtain significant gains in status, pay, and influence. In 1977 the AAUP established an award named after Professor Smith, "to recognize extraordinary leadership in improving the status of women in the academic profession or in academic collective bargaining." (AAUP Bulletin, De. 1973, pp. 402-06, and Aug. 1977, p. 122.)
Committee Z on the Economic Status of the Profession
The importance of Committee Z is indicated by the title on the front cover of the March-April 1989 issue of Academe: "The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession 1988-89." Virtually this entire issue each spring, and portions of at least two other issues which report on meetings of the Council and the Annual Meeting, are devoted to the work of this alphabetically last but not least of the AAUP's standing committees. Widely cited as the best authority for accurate comparative data on average institutional faculty salaries and overall compensation, listed both by rank and by gender within each institution, the annual Committee Z report also contains tables listing average salaries nationally by types of institutions, by disciplines, by regions, and by gender. Data regarding percentages of faculty members on tenure track appointments, or tenured, by rank are frequently provided as well. And the relationship of faculty pay raises each year to the rise in the consumer price index for the same period is always depicted.
In recent years this report has been published early to enable conference and chapter leaders to use the statistics therein presented to support representations to legislators, governors, and governing boards in favor of increased compensation for faculty members. Lobbying leaflets, brochures, and presentation charts and slides are easily produced using Committee Z data. And professors wishing to compare their own salaries with those of others in the same rank or discipline or a similar type of institution have the means of doing so, while those contemplating a change of scenery can arm themselves prior to initiating negotiations with information about average salary levels at the institution to which they are considering a move.
Although Committee Z, according to the Redbook (p. 171) "formulates standards relating to the economic status of the academic profession," these standards heretofore have related largely to issues of institutional finance, retirement, insurance, outside employment, and other economic interests of faculty members, besides the contractual compensation of individual professors.
CHAPTERS
History and Function of Chapters
When first organized, the AAUP had no chapters. But the 1916 by-laws authorized the organization of "branches" consisting of seven or more members of the Association in the same institution, and these were changed to "chapters" in 1921. In 1916 there were 31 "branches"; in 1926 there were 119 chapters; in 1936 there were 253; in 1946 there were 326; in 1956 there were 474; in 1966 there were over 800; and by 1986 there were approximately 700 chapters, the great majority in universities and four-year colleges.
An essential role of a college or university chapter is to promote understanding and acceptance of AAUP principles by faculty and administration. Since institutions of higher learning carry, the task of chapter leaders is specifically to apply Association principles to the conditions existing in their own particular setting. Another important function of the chapter is to provide AAUP's Washington headquarters with information about institutional problems and data that will both aid in servicing members and contribute to the formulation of policy. This would include news of chapter activities, and new officers names and addresses. A responsibility of chapter leaders also is to enlist new members. Membership recruitment should be a perpetual concern and frequent occupation of all AAUP chapter members.
Other areas in which chapters should play active roles on their own campuses are (1) promoting improvements in curricula and in the quality of teaching; (2) sponsoring discussion and action regarding campus-wide problems, issues, and priorities; and (3) seeking ways to improve and reward advances in the quality of the work in the faculty.
Of the functions and responsibilities of chapters mentioned in this handbook none can be accomplished better than with frequent local newsletters, distributed not only to local AAUP members but also to national and state officers, the Washington office, and local non-members among professors and administrators. Such newsletters can be mimeographed single sheets or more elaborate productions; in any case they should convey not only local news, but also state and national AAUP news and communications of importance to members.
Chapter newsletters may contain material extracted or photocopied from national or state AAUP publications or digested from such sources as The Chronicle of Higher Education. They may contain essays, drawings, or other creative or analytical material contributed by faculty members, and they may also be used to bring the attention of the campus community news about the activities and achievements of professors or the actions of administrators at various levels which bear on faculty concerns.
How to Form a Chapter
In establishing a chapter of the Association on his or her campus, one must first realize that only active, graduate student, and emeritus members of the AAUP may belong to a chapter at an institution of higher education. Associate members may attend meetings by invitation but have no voting privileges thereat; emeritus and graduate student members may vote at the discretion of the chapter.
There must be at least seven active AAUP members employed on a local campus. Upon adopting a suitable constitution, which must be in harmony with the principles and procedures of the Association and which provides, for the election at least biennially of officers including a president, a secretary, and a treasurer, or a secretary-treasurer, the founding chapter members may receive a charter from the Association to operate officially as an AAUP chapter. Such a charter may be revoked by the Council, under Article VII of the Constitution of the national Association, for malpractice, impropriety, prolonged inaction, or violation of AAUP standards or policies. A charter may also be revoked if active membership in the chapter drops below seven.
Duties of Chapter Officers
The primary duty of a chapter president is to call and preside over chapter meetings and to energize the chapter. He or she should resolve to give chapter business a high priority in allocating his or her time during the time served as president.
The primary duty of a chapter secretary is promptly to inform the secretary-treasurer of the national Association of the names and addresses of chapter officers and to conduct the correspondence of the chapter with representatives of various components of the AAUP. The secretary keeps minutes of chapter meetings and, working with the president, sees that proper files are maintained.
The chapter treasurer should keep meticulous records of receipts and expenditures of chapter funds, and an accounting of all financial transactions should be regularly reported to the members, along with a statement of the current balance, money due but not yet collected, and obligations not yet fulfilled. Chapters may collect voluntary or mandatory dues; the latter makes budgeting much easier than the former. Large sums of money should earn interest for the chapter, and special accounts (such as legal aid funds) should of course be used only for the purposes for which they were established.
Payroll deductions for AAUP dues is available on many campuses and should be sought at institutions where no insurmountable obstacle to such a provision exists. If a chapter participates in a payroll deduction program, the Washington office of the AAUP must be provided with current lists of all those members whose dues are being deducted. Those lists should include members' names, preferred mailing addresses, and disciplines. The national office should be notified monthly of any changes that occur, so that new members may be placed on mailing lists, and records corrected to show members no longer participating.
To discontinue participation in a payroll deduction program does not necessarily mean discontinuation of membership in the Association. For example, a member may change institutions without relinquishing membership. In such cases chapter secretaries should try to send a forwarding address, so that the national office may track the member who has moved.
Whether the school business officer or the chapter secretary forwards payroll deduction dues to the national office, they should be sent on a regular basis, at least quarterly. Many chapters remit payment monthly.
A chapter's dues may be collected as part of the national billing program. This is known as integrated dues. For a chapter to participate on this program, the president must send a written request stating the amount of dues to be collected. The request must be received by July 15 in order for dues to be collected in this way the following year.
The funds collected for chapters via the integrated dues program is forwarded to the chapter treasurer quarterly, unless the amount involved is less that $25.00, in which case there is a wait until that amount is reached. (If there is no treasurer, the money is sent to the president.)
Other Relations with the National Office
Among many possible relationships, chapter contact with the national office of the AAUP is the most important. For the most efficient use of this resource, chapter leaders should know the specialties of staff members, so that the proper person may be quickly contacted in the first instance, without wasted time or effort.
Before communicating with the Washington office, have complete and accurate factual information and have some idea of the bearing of AAUP policy on the issue at question. Remember that help is probably also available from your state conference officer; from the Conference lobbyist or executive secretary, if there is one; perhaps also from one of the officers of the Assembly of State Conferences or the Collective Bargaining Congress (if yours is a CB chapter); or from one or more of your three national Council members. Keep an up-to-date list of contact people connected with the national and state AAUP organizations. Promptly respond to incoming messages and be thorough and accurate in your answers.
In the chapter president should keep a current file of school policies (including catalogs, official directives, and student handbooks); lists of names, addresses and telephone numbers of important contacts both in the Association and without; and chapter rosters with information of local interest added as needed. Ideally, the chapter secretary should also have most of this information. Once established and routinely maintained, such a file tends to reduce rather than increase work of chapter officers.
None of this can be done without thorough, accurate information from the Washington office which, in turn, depends on what is forwarded to them. The following information not mentioned above should be routinely forwarded to the Washington office.
1. Changes of Address. The Washington office should be notified as soon as possible if a member's address changes. For most members the only AAUP contact is through the mail, and an incorrect address means a lost member.
2. Chapter Officer Changes. When chapter elections (required biannually by the National Constitution) take place, the new officers' names and AAUP membership numbers, if available, as well as the other terms of office, should be sent to Washington by the retiring chapter president or secretary. Without this action, Association materials cannot reach the proper parties. All chapter officers must be national dues paying members.
3. Corrections in a Member's Record. If chapter rosters do not show the correct information, including subject areas, for members, the secretary should so inform the Washington office. Obviously, the national staff would like to be informed promptly of the death of a member.
4. Transfers of Membership. If an individual member would like to alter the nature of his or her membership (e.g., from part time to full time, or from active to emeritus membership), he or she should notify the Washington office in writing of this desire so that proper records can be kept and correct billings sent.
Chapter Rosters
The national office provides each chapter with a roster of its members four times annually. These quarterly rosters are mailed to chapter secretaries in mid-January, mid-April, mid-July and mid-October. If there is no record of a chapter secretary, the rosters will be sent to the president. The roster contains records of those who have paid national dues directly to the Washington office. An "I" to the left of a person's name indicates that he or she has not renewed membership in the Association and will be dropped from the next roster if dues are not remitted promptly. Chapter officers should attempt to obtain a dues payment before this happens.
Further Responsibilities of Chapter Officers
The basic duties of chapter officers should be specified in the chapter constitution. A model chapter constitution appears in the appendices to this handbook. Each officer should possess a copy of this document and a copy of the AAUP Redbook, the Association's policy manual.
Chapter officers are usually elected toward the end of the spring term to assume their duties during the summer of fall. This normally provides an opportunity for orientation before plans have to be made for the coming year and decisions reached about how to cope with problems that may arise. As soon as possible once the spring term is over a new chapter president should take the following steps.
First, thoroughly familiarize yourself with the nature of the work of the Association, so as to form a clear conception of its vital role in the world of higher education. Spend some time thinking about AAUP precepts and their evolution and application in relation to your own ideas and experience.
Second, incorporate this knowledge into a coherent written description of what the Association's contributions have been and are to higher education and indeed to society in general.
Third, publicize this knowledge widely and persistently, and ask colleagues who know you and respect your judgment to assist in the work. Point out the importance of sustaining the Association.
Fourth, as you continue to remind faculty members at your institution of the values, precepts, and achievements of the AAUP, see that they are kept supplied with information about current developments in which the different levels of the Association are involved. Scrutinize Academe, Footnotes, the Chapter/Conference Newsletters and The Chronicle of Higher Education for items of interest. Exchange information and, if possible, newsletters with other chapters.
Fifth, use your conference for information and support. Become active in it and encourage your colleagues to participate as well.
Sixth, encourage increased interest and participation in faculty governance according to AAUP principles on your campus. Become familiar with governing board and local administrative policies, and with state and local laws that apply to higher education, and test those edicts and ordinances against the AAUP Redbook. Divide up the research among your colleagues, encourage each other to do it within a stated period of time, and report the results at chapter meetings.
Seventh, publicize your work and its fruits among the faculty at large, as well as on other campuses. Be factual, practical, and collegial.
Eighth, seek a wide acquaintance among higher education officials and those with whom they regularly work, such as administrators, governing board members and their senior staff people, key government officials, and alumni leaders. Be courteous and responsible, and above all when you speak in such circles be truthful and well informed. Do not lose track of where your primary loyalties lie; you colleagues are you constituents, not those who might try to neutralize you.
Ninth, on campuses which have faculty senates, work to insure that a significant proportion of the members, and especially of their officers, are active AAUP members.
Finally, remember that you can do most of these things and still have time for teaching, scholarly accomplishment, recreation, and family life. Examples of dedicated professors who have done so are to be found at all levels of the Association. It is largely a matter of values and priorities. Those who have made the commitment rarely complain later that they made the wrong choice. Never forget that "Academic freedom is not free."
Chapter Activities
A healthy chapter is a active and productive chapter. But this takes both effective leadership and expenditure of time and energy. Divide the work. This can be done by using a committee system, either an adaptation of the national AAUP committee system from A to Z, or one with a different structure and somewhat altered functions. Decide what is to be done: set a realistic timetable for doing it; give it a high enough priority to assure completion on time; and remember to see that those who labor for the chapter receive appropriate credit.
Although AAUP chapters should not duplicate the work of faculty senates or usurp their prerogatives, such representative bodies must usually function under decided limitations which do not apply to local affiliates of the Association. In dealing with questions involving academic freedom, tenure, governance ideals, and professional principles, AAUP should work closely with senate officers to insure that all who speak for the faculty at large understand and consistently uphold AAUP doctrines in dealing with institutional problems and the concerns of administrators, professors, students, and the general public.
A well-organized Committee A is needed at each chapter. All complaints of academic freedom violations or of serious unprofessional activity on the part of faculty members or administrators should be investigated. Accused parties should have the opportunity to hear and reply to the charges against them. Written evidence should be sought and school policies relating to the matter at hand carefully consulted. Conversations with parties to the dispute should be carried on by two or more chapter representatives, and memoranda of what was said--set down in timely fashion--kept for the record. Although it is not desirable for investigators to act alone in conducting interviews, the number of persons participating in a chapter's academic freedom, responsibility, or tenure inquiry should be kept small, and confidentiality should be rigorously maintained.
The first object of the investigation is to determine if violations of school policies by-laws, and/or AAUP policies have occurred. If so, those handling the matter for the chapter should attempt to resolve the problem quietly on campus by mediation, utilizing whatever grievance procedures exist. If a satisfactory grievance policy is lacking, chapter leaders should try to get one established. A sample of such a policy appears in the appendices to this handbook.
If the chapter's investigations indicates that no violations of law or policy have occurred, the complainant should be informed of that conclusion, the case dropped, and the record of the investigation secured in such a way that confidentiality will be maintained.
If attempted mediation by the chapter proves unsuccessful, or if chapter officers have good reason to believe that efforts to pursue that course would be unadvisable, the party claiming a grievance may be put in touch with a member of the Committee A staff of the Washington office, which will then assume jurisdiction of the matter for the Association. From that point onward, the chapter should not act in regard to the matter unless or until asked to do so by national office.
Because Committee A inquiries are so numerous, it may be desirable at times, particularly when an administration which has apparently wronged a faculty member, while locally ruthless and recalcitrant, is also susceptible to outside pressure or unfavorable publicity, to draw on the resources of a state conference which has an effective Committee A and might even be in a position to furnish legal aid. The decision to request assistance from this source should be carefully considered and any doubt of its wisdom should be resolved only after consultation with a representative of the national staff of the AAUP.
When faculty colleagues approach AAUP members for advice about grievances, they should not normally be encouraged at the outset to employ an attorney or to threaten a lawsuit. Rather the dissatisfied professor, utilizing AAUP help if requested, should study applicable institutional policies and comply with all legitimate requirements for exhausting administrative remedies, including available grievance procedures. A documented record of such actions can later be used in a lawsuit, if one becomes desirable, but complainants should be aware that legal action is time-consuming, and normally very expensive. Moreover, most administrators, when faced with possible legal action, will become rigid and non-communicative and immediately place the issue in the hands of their attorneys. The dispute then is likely to become a kind of warfare, with a single faculty member either confronted by the entire power of the state (if employed at a public institution), or facing a united administration with its battery of prominent lawyers (in the case of a private school.)
In academic matters, as in statecraft, diplomacy is almost always preferable to war and should therefore be pursued first, for lawsuits usually preclude subsequent diplomacy. When is becomes apparent to chapter leaders that diplomacy has failed, it is probably time to advise the aggrieved party to contact the Washington office of the AAUP, if he or she has not already done this. Such a contact should be occasion for sending the national office whatever information the local chapter has compiled on the matter at issue.
Membership Development by Chapters
The national membership of the AAUP in all categories at the beginning of 1991 was approximately 50,000. About twenty percent of those enrolled at that time in the Association were women, and a smaller number were minorities. Younger faculty members were underrepresented, proportionally, as were faculty members in two-year institutions.
Most AAUP members belong to one of the approximately 1,500 chapters of the organization. In turn, many chapters belong to state conferences. The level of activity in both chapters and conferences varies considerably; in dormant or ineffective chapters new leadership is needed before any appreciable membership development can take place.
Collateral Benefits
Many faculty members through professional societies in their disciplines obtain special rates for insurance, travel, and other occupational necessities, but for those whose needs are not thus met the AAUP offers a variety of benefits. Available to members are the special introductory subscription rates to The Chronicle of Higher Education and the The New York Review of Books, group term life insurance, excess major medical insurance, disability income protection, hospital indemnity insurance, low cost automobile rentals, and a special travel program. Of special interest to many faculty members conscious of the increasing incidence of lawsuits in academia is the AAUP's professional liability insurance, still available at competitive rates.
Publications
An obvious return-on-investment is the subscription that all members receive to the award-winning bi-monthly journal Academe, with its authoritative articles and reports on serious and complex questions of vital concern to college professors and administrators; its records of Association activities and statements of policy; and its annual compensation surveys, which have established and maintained standards of substantial utility to virtually every faculty member in higher education. As one observer has noted, the annual compensation surveys alone have "done as much as any other single thing to bring out the steady increases in faculty salaries which have characterized higher education in [recent] ... years." (Lewis Mayhew, Higher Education in the Revolutionary Decades, p. 467.) For many years these figures have been widely used in dealing with budget issues, in justifying pay increases, and in correcting imbalances. Every professor who receives a salary has an "AAUP dividend," which is far larger than yearly AAUP dues.
Although non-members may freely use the information and ideas published in Academe, and many do, those who pay due to support its publication have first access to its pages. And they also enjoy the opportunity exclusively to receive the Association's newsletter Footnotes, containing information of general professional interest, and to keep up with state and local academic news with conference and chapter publications. Officers receive a bi-monthly Chapter-Conference Newsletter, updates on the Association's extensive litigation activities, and frequent, detailed reports on the status of legislation affecting higher education. Also available is the 1990 edition of Redbook, a compilation of the AAUP's major policy documents and reports which set forth the most authoritative standards for academic procedures and governance. No faculty member should lack one. Chapters engaged in collective bargaining receive a special newsletter containing the latest information on CB legislation and court decisions, as well as developments in other AAUP collective bargaining units.
Legislative Alerts designed to activate the Association's national governmental relations network, when problems arise that need attention, are sent to chapter members who request them. A toll-free legislative hotline supplies all members with information, revised daily, about the current status of bills in Congress, as well as government activity in general related to higher education. And an AAUP Handbook on Lobbying at the State Capitol is available to those who seek guidance in carrying on such activities.
Government Relations
The AAUP continues to maintain a close watch on legislation affecting higher education and participates in organized efforts to obtain improvements in laws and government policies. Faculty members and administrators have benefitted from this strenuous activity, which has kept students in school whose absence would have cost professors their jobs, and which has prevented the loss of billions of dollars of support for higher education research, libraries, and laboratories.
Defense of Academic Freedom
The AAUP's most important function is its definition and defense of academic freedom and tenure. The national office of the AAUP handles annually over one thousand complaints of violations of academic freedom, due process and tenure rights. Many are settled favorably, without litigation, at little or no cost to the complainant. Should a serious question of principle be involved, however, the AAUP may initiate or sustain legal action. In 1986, for example, it participated in four cases heard by the United States Supreme Court. This determined defense of faculty rights and freedoms not only assists individuals but also persuades innumerable potential violators to refrain from action at variance with AAUP principles. Task forces and periodic conferences sponsored by the AAUP supplement its academic freedom investigations by addressing issues of concern to professors; and the many reports emanating from the Association, published in article, pamphlet or handbook form, have for decades been vital to academia.
The existence of a favorable climate of academic freedom and due process on many campuses today actually depends upon the visible good health and successful activity of the Association. Faculty members should understand that if the AAUP loses its effectiveness, the erosion of academic freedom that will at once ensue will inevitably spread until it becomes so pervasive that few campuses will be able to maintain it.
Categories and Conditions of Membership
Before attempting to recruit new members or re-enroll current or former adherents, those representing the AAUP should know the present dues structure and the various membership categories.
Most AAUP members are classified as "Active/Full Time" members and pay full dues. Non-professors classified as either "Associate" members, in the case of academic administrators, or as "Public" members, in the case of non-academics, pay approximately three-fourths of full dues. The "Active/Entrant" category for non-tenured first-time members, and the "Joint" category for spouses in two-professor marriages, both pay one-half of full dues. "Active/Part-time," "Emeritus," and "Graduate Student" members all pay only one fourth of full dues.
All memberships in the AAUP are held by individuals in the national Association. They run for twelve months from the date of enrollment. Members who pay dues through payroll deduction are assigned a December 31 expiration date, and their full dues payments thereafter are based on the calendar year.
Dues may be paid by payroll deduction, by installment payments directly to the AAUP, or by Visa or Mastercard credit cards. Membership renewal notices are mailed three months before the scheduled expiration date. If not promptly acted upon, they are followed by three additional billing letters. When a faculty member joins or renews his or her affiliation with the Association, a letter of acknowledgment containing a membership card is sent. The national office of the AAUP is using the following dues billing cycle: (1)first dues bills sent to members in August; (2) membership renewal acknowledgments and lapsed member solicitations sent in September; (3) second dues notices sent to members in October; (4) possible lapsed member second solicitations sent in November; and (5) third dues notices sent to members in December.
How to Recruit New Members
Start by reading the AAUP membership development handbook which covers organizing and educating a membership committee, formulating objectives, and selecting issues on which to base a campaign, methods of recruiting, summaries of recent Association activities and accomplishments, descriptions of available brochures, posters, badges, and other AAUP appurtenances, and sample chapter membership recruitment publications. Membership kits, containing updated versions of theses materials, are sent to chapter and conference presidents in August and may be had by request of the Washington office at other times.
For additional background, also read the section on Committee F on "Chapters, Conferences, Members, and Dues," which appears earlier in this handbook.
Decide what appears workable on your campus. If possible, incorporate a dues payroll deduction plan into overall scheme. Note the availability of dues rebates to chapters participating in a recognized membership development plan (Membership Handbook, p. 21a), and try to assemble and gain national office approval of such a plan in order to collect these rebates. Seek out the newly employed professors. Send a list of those persons to the Washington office. They will be sent a special membership letter.
Having developed your plan, target it especially at campus leaders, as their enrollment will frequently induce other professors to join without strenuous recruitment efforts.
In trying to recruit colleagues to join the AAUP, recognize that they probably have little or no idea what the Association does nor how its work relates to them. You must therefore teach them with the same command of your subject and the same skill of presentation that you lavish on your brightest students. This must be done most effectively in person. Have membership materials obtained from AAUP sources ready to hand to prospective recruits.
Know the current AAUP dues rates, membership categories, and methods of payment, and know also what benefits are offered to members. If possible, have printed or duplicated compilations of the advantages of membership to hand to prospective recruits, along with membership application forms. Obtain brochures and other literature in advance from the Washington office. Be prepared to deal with such questions as What can the AAUP do for me, and Why are dues so high? A mock recruiting session is a good way to prepare for such questions. And follow up with additional visits and phone calls whenever someone exhibits an interest in joining the Association.
The best recruiting arguments for any campus organization are that (1) its ranks include the most highly respected members of the faculty, (2) its work is of tangible benefit to the institution, and especially to the faculty, and (3) it anticipates and constructively deals with issues of the greatest concern to local professors. A recent faculty survey conducted by the Washington office of the AAUP elicited the following responses. The biggest problem in American higher education was said to be a shortage of money for research. Almost as serious was "poor student preparation," followed by relatively low faculty salaries. From a faculty sample in which only one-third were current or former AAUP members, the most important concern was "protecting academic freedom." If these findings in any way reflect professional perceptions on your campus, you ought to be able to show that joining the AAUP would be the most practical way to address the leading concerns of your colleagues.
Retaining Current Members
Keep the chapter visible. Keep the entire faculty of your institution informed about issues existing on your campus, such as the status o programmatic budgeting, curriculum changes, and developments involving academic freedom, tenure, governance, and faculty responsibility. Act also as a conduit for news about happenings at the national and state levels, especially regarding higher education appropriations, mandates, and restrictions out of Washington D.C., and legislative and governing board decisions on your own state. Keep in touch with your campus administrators and promptly share information received from them and try to share information with them. Convey an impression that the AAUP chapter is the best place to obtain accurate data and insights.
When a problem, such as the erosion of tenure rights, arises, seize hold of it at once. Do not allow other organizations to preempt the AAUP chapter in dealing with matters professors care about.
Study the problem; take care that your data is accurate and complete; then organize; and publicize. Try always to proceed in a collegial rather than a confrontational manner.
In the absence of a serious issue at your institution, your chapter may function as a prod toward improvements in the campus climate. Such an activist approach to advancing AAUP principles may be followed, if desired, by bestowing annual or more frequent awards to professors or administrators contributing the most to the advancement of academic freedom, professorial responsibility, high quality faculty governance, or an enhanced appreciation of collegiality versus a narrow vocational or disciplinary orientation. Also, you might examine both the theory and the reality of due process arrangements at your institution including grievance procedures.
When the quarterly chapter rosters arrive, duplicate them for all chapter officers and keep members on your mailing list. Periodically consult you chapter members regarding their state of satisfaction with the Association. Is the national office prompt and courteous in responding to their inquiries? Are AAUP publications and acknowledgments of membership renewal sent to them in a timely manner? When problems arise, contact the appropriate staff member at the Washington office to get them solved.
THE STATE CONFERENCES
Their History and Role in the AAUP
Article VIII of the AAUP Constitution provides for state conferences. With the approval of the Council "several chapters may organize a conference ... open to all members within the state." These members "may be represented through their chapter affiliation." When votes are taken in conference meetings, usually AAUP members in attendance who are from institutions without chapters vote individually and chapter delegates cast proportional votes reflecting the number of members in their chapters.
Conferences may require dues payment and "consider and act upon professional matters which are of concern" to their members, but conference actions do not bind chapters "without their authorization and shall be in harmony with the principles and procedures of the Association." Within these limitations, a conference may make 'formal recommendations' to the Council regarding the purposes, structure, and work of the Association." (Redbook, pp. 188-99.)
During the AAUP's early years, state conferences were merely gatherings of neighboring chapters which sought to collaborate in dealing with common problems. The Iowa state conference, established during the 1920s, stood alone for many years as a formal organization of its type. In 1948, the New Mexico state conference was organized, followed in 1949 by the Ohio state conference. By 1959, as state legislatures during the age of McCarthyism threatened academic freedom, no less than twenty-one existed. In 1965 thirty-eight state conferences were in existence, assisted by a staffer in the Washington office of the AAUP, who was assigned in 1960 to oversee establishment and development of such entities.
Existing state conferences in 1965, listed by date of establishment, were those in Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan, Virginia, Oregon, South Carolina, Arizona, Illinois, North Carolina, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Georgia, West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Utah, Texas, and Montana.
As a 1956 report of the Michigan State Conference had asserted, for over a decade state legislators had begun "to regulate by legislation as well as by appropriation more and more of the details of academic life." The oppressiveness of the new national security state established during the Truman years had encouraged public officials "to make decisions which earlier would have been made by an institution's administrators or faculty.... Neither the chapters nor the national officer, and certainly not individual members, can deal adequately with state legislatures in cases of ... prescription." Hence the existence of AAUP state conferences "to arrive at a consensus on state problems and ... communicate group will to state agencies." (Bulletin, May 1965, p. 120.) Moreover, in the March 1986 Assembly Call, "higher education officials and administrators at the state level have ... meetings, where they exchange ideal and information, and sometimes try to exert a united influence;" professors, therefore, need recourse to an organization that can serve "as a counterweight to coalitions of administrators and members of governing boards."
State conferences, of which there were 34 active and 9 inactive, in 1990, still retain the same functions, and also conduct state-wide membership drives, helping to establish, rejuvenate, or reactivate local chapters, and facilitate communication between chapters and individual members within a state through conference meetings and newsletters. And they may provide facilities for discussing such problems as violations of academic freedom and tenure contracts, inadequate salaries and fringe benefits, unreasonable limits on faculty participation in institutional governance, excessive teaching loads, low academic standards, discriminatory practices, outside interference in institutional affairs, and public hostility or indifference.
Vital to their effectiveness is the knowledge possessed by their leaders. That knowledge comes from experience and from familiarity with Association publications, especially the Redbook and back issues of Academe and the AAUP Bulletin. One commentator has suggested that "a sound historical treatise could provide the background and information necessary for significant service" on the part of state AAUP leaders. A handbook for chapters and conferences that would delineate functions more readily suited to state conference was deemed a sine quo non in meetings of the Assembly of Regional and State Conferences as early as 1963 and 1964. (Bulletin, May 1965, p.121.) It is this two-fold need--for a brief account of the evolution of AAUP policies, and for a handbook explaining the current structure, functions, and guidelines of Association entities--that the document you are now perusing attempts to satisfy.
Paying the Bills
Until recent years, most conferences financed their activities through voluntary dues levied on member chapters. There were other ways of financing conference activities as well. Although voluntary contributions, either directly to the conference treasurer of sent through the chapters, are still the principal source of principal source of revenue in some states, pro rata assessments are preferable, in order that income be more predictable and budgeting for the contracted services of lobbyists and/or executive secretaries less speculative. In recent years state conferences, beginning with Ohio, have increasingly joined in a practice called mandatory integrated (comprehensive) dues, whereby all AAUP members within a state pay conference dues as a condition of national membership. Comprehensive dues conform to one of the three following models:
1. a flat dollar amount applied to active full-time members;
2. a flat dollar amount applied to all classes of members in cases where dues are relatively low; and
3. a dollar amount pro-rated to the national dues for each class of members.
In order for a state conference to receive permission to institute comprehensive dues, its officers must fulfill certain requirements. First, they must conduct a poll by secret ballot of all AAUP members residing in their state. For this purpose, the national office will supply mailing labels, which may be affixed to conference newsletters, with the comprehensive dues ballot included, either separately or as tear-sheets. A higher rate of return will be achieved it there is return postage included on the ballot than if the recipient is expected to supply his or her own stamp. Although conference officers may give reasons elsewhere why they believe comprehensive dues are needed, the ballot itself should be so worded as to insure a fair referendum. Assuming a majority of respondents favor comprehensive dues, a full and accurate count of the results of the poll should be forwarded, along with a copy of the state conference constitution, to the chairperson of the national Committee F, accompanied by a request that his or her committee approve the institution of comprehensive dues for the conference. This should be done before the first of the year, in order to provide ample time for Committee F to consider and rule on the matter before the June Council meeting. Eventually, the state conference's request will go before the national AAUP Executive Committee, the Assembly of State Conferences, the Council, and ultimately the Annual Meeting. This happens within less than a week, with the Annual Meeting the final authority on the matter, and (assuming approval is given to the proposal) the date on which the new dues arrangement will go into effect will be first of January of the following year. Hence, any effort to initiate comprehensive dues for the benefit of a state conference must begin over twelve months before such dues can be collected. Normally, any comprehensive dues arrangement is approved for three years.
Second in importance to the fiscal health of most state conferences is an annual stipend from the grants committee of the Assembly of State Conferences. They require applications on forms sent to conference presidents in the spring, sufficient copies of which must be returned to the national office for distribution to the members of the grants committee well in advance of Annual Meeting Week in June. At that time, the grants committee convenes to consider how to allocate the funds anticipated for the ASC grantline in the Association's budget for the following year. Since the total amount of conference requests is considerably larger than the ASC is likely to receive, few conferences escape cuts in their requests. Among factors considered by the grants committee are amounts previously granted to a conference, purposes for which it expended those funds, level of service rendered by the conference to AAUP members within the state, apparent impact of the work of the conference upon recent membership trends within its jurisdiction, degree of self-sufficiency demonstrated by a realistic budget which includes a minimum level of conference dues (not less than eight dollars per capita is what the grants committee currently looks for), and potential of proposed programs.
After the grants committee decides what each state conference for a grant ought to receive, adding about ten percent of the total for administration and officer travel, the aggregate amount thus arrived at is recommended to the Association's General Secretary as the ASC grantline in the following year's budget. The budget process then proceeds (see the description earlier in this handbook) to a final determination at the November Council meeting of what the ASC grantline will be. The ASC Chair next consults the grants committee, usually by mail or telephone, regarding what final cuts ought to be made, a process at least partly anticipated the previous June when agreement was reached on across-the-board percentage cuts or on some other system of planned reductions. The final allocations are the product of a grants committee consensus on how best to utilize the available money, and letters covering checks for the appropriate amounts and stating the contingencies attached to the grants are usually mailed in early January.
Sometimes the Council, in November, will have decided to hold certain expenditures in abeyance for three months in order to provide time to insure receipt of income sufficient to cover the impounded money. Invariably this affects the ASC grantline. Hence, if income during the winter months permits, supplementary grants in small amounts may be dispensed to certain conferences after the February Executive Committee meeting. Then the entire process begins once more.
Among the sources of income other than member dues and ASC grants are interest on bank accounts and investments, contributions solicited from chapters, individuals, and philanthropies, and in-kind donations.
State Conference Committee Structure
Incoming conference presidents should ascertain that standing committee are well-led and composed of knowledgeable and enthusiastic members. A law school professor might be ideally suited for conference committee A, a political scientist might be asked to take a committee R position, and an economist requested to serve on committee Z.
Executive Committee
The most important committee is the conference Executive Committee. Normally composed of the president, vice president(s), secretary, treasurer, past-president, and perhaps members at large, it sets policy, allocates resources, and conducts the ordinary business of the organization (sometimes through an executive secretary), subject to endorsement of its decision at general membership meetings of the conferences. The president should keep close touch with the executive committee by telephone and letter and make no important decisions without consulting it. Perhaps the best times for a conference executive committee to meet face to face are during the summer months to plan work including government relations programs for the coming academic year, and immediately prior to or just after state conference meetings. If a conference has a lobbyist and/or executive secretary, such people should attend executive committee meetings. The conference president should promptly inform the national office of changes in names, addresses, and institutional affiliations of conference officers.
Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Probably the second most important committee in most state conferences will be Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Although AAUP official investigations are the exclusive province of the national Committee A only after authorization of the General Secretary, a state affiliate may be able to do useful work. Moreover, most alleged violations of academic freedom come to the attention of the Washington office long after the most serious damage is done. It is here--when, for example, a state conference lobbyist discovers that a bill endangering faculty tenure has been filed for consideration by a legislative committee--that a conference committee A can be of considerable assistance--in this case by researching legal issues, by providing expert testimony at legislative hearings, or by visiting officials who are in a position to discourage or sidetrack the proposed legislation. The same kind of deterrent effort can be made in connection with breaches of academic freedom or tenure contracts contemplated by governing boards or institutional officials in states where AAUP leaders are alert and active.
State conference committee A members ought to counsel chapter officers and individual AAUP members on matters within the committee's jurisdiction. They may also add a significant dimension to inquiries conducted by the Washington office, providing special knowledge of the issues and personalities involved. But all state conference representatives should use great care "to make it clear that responsibility for the opening and pursuit of a case rests with the national Association and they should not take position on a case in process without consulting first with the national staff." (See Academe, Sept. 1979, pp. 295-96, for a full statement on "Conference Participation in Committee A Work.")
Committee F on Membership and Dues
Every Conference should have a Committee F on Membership and Dues whose responsibility it is to recruit new members for the Association, to endeavor to keep existing members enrolled, to encourage them to pay their dues on time, and to help form new chapters and energize or re-activate dormant chapters. The chairperson of the committee should be dedicated to increase AAUP membership during each year of his or her tenure and, in consultation with the executive committee, should set realistic goals and work methodically throughout the academic year to meet them.
Utilizing techniques discussed above in the section on chapter membership recruiting, the conference committee F should target campuses where professors have expressed an interest in forming or rehabilitating a chapter, should hold organizational meetings on such campuses at times and places calculated to call forth the maximum possible attendance, and should afterwards keep in touch with chapter leaders to see that they receive regular encouragement and assistance.
Local issues debilitating to faculty morale, outraging to professional sensibilities, or injurious to individual incomes or benefits are usually what trigger expressions of interest in establishing an AAUP presence on campus. Assaults on tenure by a governing board, arbitrary decisions by administrators usurping faculty prerogatives or unnecessarily burdening or injuring individuals, or a sense of impending doom (such as financial crisis for the institution) are common reasons why state conferences are contacted for assistance. Enterprising committee F chairpersons will not await such approaches, however, but will develop contacts on campuses which do not have AAUP chapters, in order to discover at the earliest possible moment whether the time is ripe for an organizational effort initiated by the conference.
Whether the first move is made by the conference or by a professor on the targeted campus, a successful organizational campaign requires certain essential ingredients. First, someone locally who has leadership ability must assume the responsibility for the initial impetus. That person should issue a campus wide call for attendance at a meeting with state conference representatives. Such a gathering should be held in comfortable surroundings at a time when all interested faculty members can attend it. The local organizers should follow the initial announcement of the meeting with suitable reminders of time, place and purpose.
The state conference recruiting team which attends such a gathering will consist, ideally, of the state conference president or a designated representative, the chairperson of committee F, and perhaps a member of committee A, if the visit is to a private school, or a member of committee R and/or the conference lobbyist, if a public institution is involved. National Council members, if available, are useful adjuncts to such efforts.
The recruiting team should familiarize itself in advance with the local situation. Helpful in accomplishing this are copies of relevant correspondence dealing with current campus issues of concern to professors, copies of catalogs, faculty handbooks, and other repositories of institutional policies, and pertinent press clippings, if any exist.
AAUP literature, including sample copies of the Redbook, Academe, Footnotes, the AAUP Legislative News, newsletters from the state conference, and other pertinent publications should be laid out for perusal, and membership brochures should be distributed to all non-members who attend the meeting. After introductions are accomplished and a sign-up sheet on which to write names, addresses, phone numbers, and disciplines is distributed, the principal spokesperson for the conference should briefly discuss the history, purposes, accomplishments, and services of the AAUP; the same or a second speaker should do the same regarding the state conference; and the committee F representative should succinctly state the advantages of having a local chapter, what it might be able to accomplish (particularly in regard to current problems on the local campus), the degree of commitment needed to form and maintain a viable chapter, and how,, specifically, to do it. One-on-one recruitment of colleagues into the Association should be stressed. Conference representatives should not only describe the many kinds of assistance and support obtainable from the national and state organizations, but should also emphasize the necessity of local contributions of time and resources, if significant benefits are to be obtained.
A question period normally follows the AAUP organizational presentation. From the intensity and variety of the questions, conference representatives can usually discern the degree of interest in and urgency about forming a local chapter and identify those apt actively to participate. Making sure that one of the local professors is committed to take charge of the organizational movement from that point onward, and seeing that he or she possesses a copy of this handbook (or at least a copy of the section on chapters), as well as a Redbook and additional membership brochures, the visiting team departs, taking with them a copy of the meeting sign-up sheet and copies of campus directories, faculty handbooks, catalogs, and other documents the possession of which will facilitate future communication between the conference and the local campus. In the weeks that follow, the conference president and the chairperson of committee F will stay in touch with the leaders of the new chapter, trying to help it through the vital early months of existence. The Washington office should, of course be notified of what has been done, so that staff members there can conduct their own followup efforts.
In the case of existing chapters requiring renovation, somewhat the same procedure may be followed, exercising tact in dealing with inefficient or irresponsible current officers.
Recruitment of individual members is normally best left to local chapters or to the national office of the AAUP. But the state conference committee F should always be ready to lend membership assistance to efforts from these quarters and should be particularly assiduous in maintaining contact with and in responding to requests from those AAUP stalwarts who are located on campuses with fewer than enough members to form chapters, for it is much more difficult to secure a beachhead for the AAUP on a campus with no members than at an institution where a few solitary souls are known to identify with and can be used as contact persons for the Association.
Assisting Chapters in Recruiting New Members
Conference committee F chairpersons should be familiar with the section of this handbook entitled "Membership Development for Chapters" and with the contents of the national AAUP Membership Development Handbook. They should keep in touch with chapter presidents (or membership chairpersons, if separate) and should encourage not only chapter recruitment efforts but also the kind of constructive activity that will give the chapter visibility and respect on campus. They should help chapter officers acquire membership materials; assist them in obtaining payroll deduction for members; and put professors inquiring about the AAUP in touch with their local chapters or with the national office. And they should themselves maintain close contact with that office, whose services they should readily call upon whenever needed.
Assisting Chapters in Retaining Members
Conference visibility via a newsletter sent to AAUP members in the state, or at least (in cases where budgetary constraints dictate a smaller expenditure for postage) sent to chapter presidents for local duplication and distribution, is an important asset to organizing and service activities. Newsletters should contain evidence of conference accomplishments on behalf of the professorate, information about the current work of the Association at the national level, news of the activities of other conferences (obtained through newsletter exchanges), and the achievements of various chapters and perhaps of individual AAUP members throughout the state. Funds can be saved over time by the acquisition of a third class mailing permit for newsletters. Consult the Washington office on this.
Visits to chapters by conference representatives are also helpful in maintaining awareness of the importance of the Association in academia. Such visits can be used as occasions for discussing local problems, soliciting new members, and explaining what the AAUP is currently doing elsewhere in the state. "Cluster meetings" of several chapters located within or near a particular city or town can be productive. Individual members unaffiliated with any chapter who reside nearby should be invited to attend such gatherings. Finally, credibility of a local chapter can sometimes be enhanced and administrative opposition to its existence muted if the state conference holds a well publicized spring or fall meeting on the campus in question.
Committee R on Government Relations
State conferences need an adequately functioning Committee R on Government Relations. The unprecedented expansion of public institutions during the past forty years, proliferation of statewide governing boards and commissions, passage of a multitude of state laws regulating public higher education, close interest taken in educational expenditures, priorities, policies, and even curricular matters by political office-holders, and imposition on campuses of complicated and detailed regulations adopted at the state level have created problems and created issues for professors which cannot usually be dealt with as effectively either by the AAUP's Washington office or by local chapters. It is therefore essential for state conferences to devote time and resources to "government relations," a term embracing much more than mere legislative lobbying.
If possible, a state conference ought to employ a full-time lobbyist during each legislative session. Astute and active lobbyists are expensive, but they pay for their keep, and the onerous things that can happen to faculty members in public institutions who are unprotected by a capable state conference government relations program are well worth averting by a lobbyist. Expenses can be controlled by utilizing services of retired professors living in or near the state capital, or by sharing the services of experienced lobbyists for other non-partisan organizations, as the American Association of Retired Persons, Common Cause, or the League of Women Voters, where conflicts of interest or loyalty are unlikely. Sometimes the services of a politically minded professor on a part-time basis are satisfactory.
State conference lobbyists should be registered, if state law requires it. All should be familiar with the world of higher education and the special place in it of professors. All should know or quickly get to know the state officials and their staff members responsible for higher education. They should know the laws and state policies relevant to their responsibilities and how the legislative process works. They should be diligent and reliable and, above all, visible. Although they may have to assume the responsibility for procuring the passage of legislation authored or favored by the AAUP state conference (especially bills involving the economic benefits for professors and their institutions), their most important function is to act as sentinel to identify at the earliest possible moment potential threats, in the form of proposed legislation, to academic tenure, faculty governance, and existing forms of compensation. Often this can be done by checking lists of bills filed by legislators against a compendium of code numbers of other standard numerical designations for state laws which provide for tenure, curricular offerings, or faculty compensation. Since proposed changes in laws may sometimes be worded in such a way that neither the meaning nor the subject matter is easy to discern without reference to the original act, it is best to start from the latter rather than from the bill being filed. Once the lobbyist has discovered an obnoxious bill and reports it to the chairperson of the state conference committee R, the legislative network may be able to kill the bill in the committee, which involves dealing with only a handful of legislators, rather than awaiting a time when the bill has picked up momentum and endorsements and must be opposed on the floor of one or both branches of the legislature.
There is much to be said on this subject. Most of it has been expressed in the AAUP's Handbook on Lobbying at the State Capitol, copies of which should be in the possession of state conference officers, lobbyists, and committee R members.
State conference committee R work should not be confined only to legislative lobbying. Good relations with the governor or his assistants who specialize in higher education matters are always desirable. Personal contact should be maintained between AAUP representatives and these officials, with members of the Association who have personal or political ties with state office holders utilized to keep lines of communication open and AAUP viewpoints known.
Similar considerations apply to statewide governing boards and higher education commissions, whose meetings should be routinely attended by AAUP representatives (usually conference officers and/or the executive secretary or the lobbyist). These representatives should become personally acquainted with system presidents, chancellors, board members, and other such authorities, and should establish themselves at the state level as credible representatives of the Association. At such meetings available documents, including school publications such as catalogs, handbooks, and campus directories of the host institution, should be collected for the files of the state conference, and written and/or oral testimony should be offered in relation to matters on which the conference or its executive committee has reached agreement and desires formally to convey it views.
Although committees A, F and R are centerposts to most state conferences, other committees can also perform services which are both useful to members and valuable in enhancing the effectiveness of the individual conference. For example, by focusing on faculty responsibility and the ethics of the profession, a conference committee B can support the work of the state committee A by demonstrating both the value and the need for academic freedom and tenure. By surveying the faculty handbooks, institutional policies, and governance structure on individual campuses, and disseminating the results of such studies, a conference committee T can enhance the work of its membership committee, as well as support the labors of the committee A. An active committee W, devoted to addressing the special problems of women professors can have a strong impact on the results obtained by conference committees A and F. And a conference committee Z, by keeping up with compensation date and publishing timely comparative studies benefits, can effectively reinforce the efforts of committee R to obtain approval of such measures from legislative bodies and governing boards.
State Conference Meetings and Programs
State conferences should convene at times and places most convenient for the largest attendance of chapter delegates. Usually there are no two Saturday meetings, one in the fall during or near October, and a second one in the spring during March or April. The Washington office should be informed of the times and places of state conference meetings. In large states such gathering may be held on a campus near the geographic center of the state and then rotated; in more compact states location is less of a problem. Meeting arrangements should be announced well in advance and a map and description of the available facilities, including overnight housing, if needed should accompany the notice. Not later than one week beforehand a proposed agenda, the texts of any resolutions that will be voted upon, and copies of any materials to be discussed should be forwarded to those who will attend the conference meeting, either via a conference newsletter or by means of a mailing addressed to chapter presidents and/or secretaries.
A social hour, followed by a dinner and a featured speaker, may be scheduled for Friday evening (which is also a good time for the conference executive committee and other committees to meet). Then, on Saturday morning it is customary to have a continental breakfast or at least coffee and tea set up for the delegates to enjoy before the meeting. Do not begin before 9:30 or 10:00 a.m., for delegates who do not leave home before Saturday morning need ample travel time. Have a table near the entrance to the assembly room to distribute name tags and meeting materials, collect registration fees and have inscribed on a signup sheet the names, addresses, home and office telephone numbers, institutional and departmental affiliations, and AAUP offices, if any, of the arriving delegates. Such sheets should be duplicated and used to expand data bases for conference officers for reference purposes.
The conference president's gavel should hit the lectern promptly at the announced starting time. A copy of Robert's Rule of Order, Newly Revised, should be available to consult, along with copies of the conference constitution and the AAUP Redbook. The conference president may at the outset of the meeting designated a parliamentarian. After statements of welcome, among which may be one from a local campus official, and the recognition of visitors, the agenda is formally adopted; the minutes of the previous meeting (a draft of which should have been mailed out to the members in advance) are approved; a treasurer's report is also submitted for information and approval; the president makes announcements and presents special action items of which notice has already been given; committee chairpersons report; the lobbyist and/or executive secretary also reports; old carryover business and new business consisting of last minute unannounced items are acted upon; and a guest speaker may be introduced for whatever part of the program he or she is to occupy. Panel discussions of pending issues may be scheduled. If time permits, chapter delegates may describe conditions on their campuses, and the meeting should not be adjourned without expressions of appreciation to those hosting the affair.
At spring conference meetings, presidents should provide for the election, by secret ballot, of four such representatives to the June ASC meeting and two delegates to the Annual Meeting. All action taken by a state conference at any meeting, along with brief summaries of the discussion relating to them, and the names and affiliations of those present, should be recorded by the secretary, and these minutes should thereafter be supplied to the other officers in time for actions voted at the meetings to be taken in a timely manner.
The Association President, Council members representing the district in which the state conference is located, and other national officers residing in that state, are ex officio members of the conference and should be invited to its meetings, and sent its newsletters. They should be given time on the program to address matters of mutual interest and respond to questions.
Other guest speakers may include representatives of state government with responsibilities for higher education; experts in such fields as compensation, health care, retirement, and certain technical areas like the uses of computers of academic life; and people well-versed in the knowledge of trends and movements in higher education, such as assessment and evaluation techniques and methods of management. Delegates at state conference meetings can learn what is happening on other campuses; what they may adopt for their own use; what dangers lie ahead; and what comparisons may be useful in pursuing AAUP objectives at their own institutions.
The Assembly of State Conferences
The Council of the State and Regional Conferences, as it was originally designated, was formed at a caucus of conference representatives attending the 1959 Annual Meeting. Fourteen of twenty-seven existing conferences created an ad hoc committee to compose a constitution for the new organization, the AAUP constitution was amended to designate the Chair of the Assembly of State Conference as it came to be called by the 1970's as an ex officio member of both the Council and its Executive Committee and the immediate past Chair of the ASC as an ex officio member of the Council. Formal recommendations from ASC meetings were to "go to the Council for consideration and possible transmission to [Annual] Meetings of the Association."
Currently, the purpose of the ASC is "to facilitate cooperation, and to provide for the dissemination of pertinent information, among the officers and members of the various state conferences, as well as to promote the general objectives of the AAUP. The ASC meets once yearly during the Annual Meeting week in June, usually for a two-hour period on Wednesday evening following Legislative Relations (or Capitol Hill) Day, and a second two-hour session on Thursday. The ASC's members are the state conferences, each of which is entitled to select by secret ballot up to four representatives to vote at the June ASC meeting. The organization's executive committee is composed of a Chair, a Vice Chair, a Secretary, a Treasurer, the immediate past Chair, and one at-large member. The Secretary and Treasurer are elected by a majority vote of the conference representatives present at June meetings in even-numbered years; the Chair, Vice-Chair, and at-large member of the Executive Committee are similarly elected in odd-numbered years. At least two candidates for each of the above-mentioned offices, except the at-large position, must be presented by a nominating committee, with candidates recommended by delegates from three or more state conferences automatically included among the nominees. Nominations may also be made from the floor, a practice used in recent years to select the at-large member of the ASC executive committee from between the two unsuccessful candidates for Chair and Vice-Chair. Short resumes of past AAUP and related service are distributed, and time has usually been set aside for the candidates to speak.
Among the duties of the ASC Chair are to (1) call meetings of the Executive Committee and special meetings of the Assembly; (2) preside at such meetings and also regular June ASC meetings and meetings of the Conference Grants Committee; (3) appoint a nominating committee early enough in the year for it to submit a slate of candidates for ASC offices not later than six weeks before the June meetings of the assemble; (4) communicate with the conferences by means of a publication known as Assembly Call to inform them in timely fashion of the time and place and tentative agenda for the June ASC meeting and about deadlines for sending in conference grant applications and names of conference representatives at ASC meetings; (5) arrange visits to conferences by ASC leaders; and (6) represent the state conferences and the ASC on both the AAUP's national Council and its Executive Committee.
ASC Meetings
The time available for the June ASC meetings is so limited that they must be conducted in a very businesslike fashion. The typical format includes adopting an agenda mailed out in advance, approving the minutes of the previous meeting, hearing a treasurer's report, listening to the Chair relate the "state of the conferences" and the activities of the Assembly officers acting on resolutions forwarded from member conferences, acting on requests for approval of comprehensive dues supplied by Committee F, and holding elections of ASC officers. The ASC Chair will incorporate into his or her presentation to the Council and the Annual Meeting thereafter not only what was reported to the ASC but also what was done by the ASC.
In 1969 and again in 1970 the ASC sponsored two well-attended National Leadership Institutes for conference officers, and in 1976 it conducted a highly praised Faculty-Administrator-Legislator seminar in Arlie, Virginia. Attendance at such programs, as well as attendance at annual ASC meetings, was supported by special travel agents for participants, a practice which lapsed during the 1980's in an era of stringent economies for the Association.
Capitol Hill Day, when the Annual Meeting is in Washington, D.C., is an important occasion for state conference representatives attending ASC meetings. Conference presidents should consult with AAUP members who plan to go to Washington from their state and then contact their U.S. senators and congressmen well in advance to set up appointments on Capitol Hill Day to discuss higher education matters. Assistance in doing this is available at the Washington office. (See the discussion on the work of Committee R earlier in this handbook for further guidance.)
EMPLOYMENT ISSUES
From time to time the Association has published guidelines dealing with various aspects of employment. Some of these are summarized or reference below.
Workloads
The Redbook contains (on pp. 163-66) a "Statement on Faculty Workload" which stipulates that teaching loads at the undergraduate level should not exceed twelve hours per week, "with no more than six separate course preparations during the academic year," while at the graduate level the load should be no more than nine hours weekly. The preferred pattern, however, would be nine and six hours, respectively. Workload policy should be determined only with full faculty involvement. The statement details many factors that should be considered in determining faculty workloads. (For background on the three-year evolution of this statement, see the AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1966, pp. 385-86, and March 1970, pp. 30-32.)
Outsiders to academia, including public officials and members of governing boards, frequently misunderstand what is meant by teaching loads. A California administrator once put the matter in perspective in an address to a group of legislators. "The whole concept of teaching hours," he said, "... as a measure of faculty productivity is terribly misleading.... To use such simplistic measures gives the impression that teaching in the classroom is all a professor does.... If we to apply the same narrow definition of workload to other fields we could assume that all a surgeon does is operate, or all that a policeman does is make arrests. The average National Football League player is engaged in actual combat only about an hour and a half in an entire fourteen-game season. Is this the only facet of his job to be considered?" (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1971, pp. 302-03.)
Entering and Leaving Employment
Standards for recruitment and resignations of faculty members are contained on pages 81-82 of the Redbook. Negotiations should not be kept secret from current employers; resignations should not take place after May 15 or thirty days after receiving notification of the term of employment for the following year, "whichever date occurs later;" and an offer of employment should not be tenured after May 1.
Credit for Previous Service
In 1987 Committee A reaffirmed a nine-year-old AAUP statement "On Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere as Part of the Probationary Period" (for which see Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, p. 52 and AAUP Bulletin, Sept. 1978, pp. 274-75), which reiterated the admonition in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure that "the precise terms and conditions of every appointment should be stated in writing and be in the possession of both institution and teacher before the appointment is consummated," and added that the amount of previous service to be credited "should be determined and set forth in writing at the time of the initial appointment." Difficult questions, such as how to treat service which took place "many years in the past," or "in a distinctly different area," should be referred to a faculty committee. Credit should normally be given for up to three years or appropriate "probationary service in one or more institutions" on a seven-year tenure track appointment.
Job Interviews
As part of the hiring process departments may wish to incorporate into the campus visits of applicants a sample lecture, in order to gain some first-hand indication of teaching ability. Indeed, some schools ask for two such presentations, one in the form of "a lesson of thirty to fifty minutes," and the second in the guise of a scholarly discourse based on work in the candidate's research field. In the former instance, usually targeted at undergraduate audiences, the applicant may choose his or her method (lecture, question and answer, discussion, etc.); may distribute written handouts; may use audiovisual materials. The second mode of presentation usually calls for the equivalent of a paper delivered before a scholarly meeting or to an advanced graduate seminar. (For further guidance see the AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1974, pp. 379-82.)
Ideology and Employment
The employment process necessarily involves value judgments regarding ideology and competence. Committee A has published observations on this subject (for which see Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1986, pp. 1a-2a). Although "the principles of academic freedom do not assume that every tributary and rivulet from a disciplinary stream has per se a right to be represented within a given department," and despite the fact that they do not excuse or protect "mendacity, plagiarism, intentional mismanagement of experiments, scholarly slovenliness and the like, "new ideas and approaches should be welcome; "so that students are enabled to make informed choices among them." In the end, "good faith judgments ... wisely made" are the best guarantee that the selection process will not exclude otherwise competent candidates merely because of conflict "between their ideas and those which constitute or issue from some contemporary orthodoxy."
First Amendment Rights
The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure upholds the right of professors to exercise their freedom of speech as citizens but calls for restraint, respect for the opinions of others, accuracy, and disclaimers of being an institutional spokesperson. Should a faculty member fail to observe the above limitations, an administration may institute dismissal proceedings. Such proceedings, Committee A has declared, should include a hearing before an elected faculty committee and should "take into account the faculty member's entire record as a teacher and scholar." Opinions expressed by professors in their capacity as citizens "cannot constitute grounds for dismissal" unless they clearly demonstrate "the faculty member's unfitness for his position," and the burden of proof is on those making the charges. Hence extramural utterances should rarely lead to dismissal. (See the Redbook, p. 32, and the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1965, p. 29.)
Political Participation
The Association has taken a strong position on the right of professors as citizens to engage in political activity, so far as such activity is consistent with their primary obligations as teachers and scholars. Policies allowing leaves of absence "incident to political activity" are encouraged, as are reductions of workload, "accompanied by equitable adjustment of compensation when necessary." (See Redbook, pp. 33-34.)
The Status of Librarians
In 1973 the AAUP joined the Association of College and Research Libraries in approving a "Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians," the "essential criterion" for which was stipulated as "the function of the librarian as a participant in the processes of teaching and research." Librarians with faculty status should have the same rights and responsibilities as other members of the faculty and "should have a voice in the development of the institution's educational policy." All professors "should take an active interest in the operation and development of the library," and the determination of library policies that affect academic programs and "the general interests of the institution" should be shared by the governing board, the library faculty, and "representatives of the general faculty." (Redbook, pp. 134-35.) For a critique on "The Mismanagement of College Libraries" and a rejoinder, both of which contain insights into academic library operations, see the AAUP Bulletin, March 1966, pp. 46-51 and Sept. 1966, pp. 283-89.
Departmental and School Administration
Department chairpersons have always been viewed by the AAUP as part of the faculty and not as "managerial" personnel. They should therefore not be excluded from faculty bargaining units. As long ago as 1916, the Association's second president expressed a desire to abolish "the department-head system," one "suitable for a cotton-factory, not for a university.... The executive duties of a university-department can be amply performed by a chairman, or other competent drudge." (AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1973, pp. 20-21 and fall 1970, p. 301.)
Renewing and Terminating Faculty Appointments
One of the most difficult tasks of an academic administrator is to decide whether to renew the appointment of a probationary faculty member. The Association has a firm policy on this subject entitled "Statement of Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments" (for which see Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1990, pp. 48-51, which is a revision of the statement in the Redbook, pp. 15-20, supplemented by pp. 22-23 and 28 of the same source). Probationary faculty should be advised at an early date of standards and procedures affecting evaluations for renewal and tenure; there should be periodic review of the current status of such faculty members, including "the opportunity to submit material" bearing on his or her case; decisions not to re-appoint should be delivered in writing and requests by faculty members to be informed in writing of the reasons for non-reappointment should be honored; an opportunity should be provided "to request reconsideration by the independent faculty body to review allegations of academic freedom violations, of discrimination, or of inadequate consideration, if one of these reasons is given for desiring reconsideration. An advisory letter from the Washington officer asserts, however, that the AAUP desires to permit institutions "within the limits of academic freedom, the utmost latitude in determining who will be retained for tenure appointments," and strongly opposes "tenure by default." (See the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1964, p. 85.)
The AAUP's "Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment" (see the Redbook, p. 31) remain (1) not later than March 1 of the first academic year of service; (2) not later than December 15 of the second year; and (3) "at least twelve months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years in the institution."
Dismissal proceedings (see also the discussion of financial exigency in the section above dealing with the work of Committee T) are covered in a joint statement of the Association of American Colleges and the AAUP (see the Redbook, pp. 11-14), and in the AAUP's "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (Ibid, pp. 25-28). They are summarized below, but interested parties should consult the full texts.
1. Institutions should have "formulated their own definition of adequate cause for dismissal, bearing in mind the 1940 Statement."
2. Such cases must be "related, directly and substantially, to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers."
3. Attempts should be made by the "appropriate administrative officers" and, if necessary, by an elected faculty committee, to resolve the problems.
4. If formal charges are to be brought, they should be stated "with reasonable particularity."
5. The faculty member notified by the president of his or her impending dismissal is entitled, upon request, to a formal hearing by a faculty body "not previously concerned with the case;" meanwhile, suspensions should be imposed (with pay) "only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by continuance."
6. Hearings should be conducted according to set procedures in the Redbook, pp. 26-27.
7. The decision of the hearing body should be given due weight by the president and the governing board.
8. According to a joint subcommittee of Committees A and N, "after the board's ruling, a faculty member ... should be given the right to proceed to arbitration," particularly in collective bargaining circumstances, in which case "an outside arbitrator ... may make a binding decision." (See the Redbook, pp. 65-68.)
ACADEMIC FREEDOM, TENURE AND DUE PROCESS
The section of this devoted to the work of Committee A deals with the defense of academic freedom and tenure by this agency of the Association.
Academic Freedom
On the occasion of his receipt of the AAUP's Alexander Meiklejohn Award for outstanding contributions to academic freedom, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame, declared "that academic freedom does not live by rhetoric alone. ... it must be won daily, and exercised daily and responsibly by each one of us. ... academic freedom is not so much freedom from somebody or something, as freedom to do something." Professors therefore have an obligation to use their special freedom, "with courage and ... wisdom." (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1970, pp. 149-52. Informative are three anthologies on academic freedom edited by Walter Metzger: [1] The American Concept of Academic Freedom Information: A Collection of Essays and Reports; [2] Professors on Guard: The First AAUP Investigations; and [3] The Constitutional Status of Academic Freedom. All three volumes were published at Salem, N.H. by Ayer Co. in 1977.)
Tenure
An article, "In Defense of Academic Tenure," by Fritz Machlup (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1964, pp. 112-24), delivered as his presidential address, discussed advantages and disadvantages of the tenure system. General Secretary Bertram H. Davis affirmed the proposition that the problems which critics asserted were inherent in the tenure system "are defects rather of its administration than of the system itself." (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1969, p. 427.) Higher Education institutions that have an AAUP-approved tenure system are much more likely to have high quality productive faculty than those that do not.
Due Process
If academic freedom is protected by tenure, tenure must them be protected by academic due process, which involves an adherence to certain procedures which must be followed prior to termination of an academic appointment. Fairness, which is the key element of these procedures, requires adequate notice and an opportunity for a hearing, a denial of which is a denial of due process. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1963, pp. 318-19.) Hearing committees reviewing contested faculty grievance, non-reappointment, and dismissal cases should always "be elected by their faculty colleagues." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1988, p. 51.)
Due process on campus is derived more from academic common law than from statutes or leading court decisions. Procedures for insuring academic freedom were mentioned in the AAUP's 1915 "Declaration of Principles" and in the 1925 "Conference Statement" endorsed by the AAUP and the Association of American colleges, as well as in the 1940 AAUP-AAC "Statement of Principles," which introduced the burden of proof concept upon the administration in cases involving tenured faculty members, and upon the teacher in cases dealing with probationary teachers. An American Civil Liberties Union publication entitled "Academic Due Process" issued in 1954 was the first comprehensive statement treating the subject. This pamphlet helped to inspire a 1958 AAUP "Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings" which appears in the Redbook (pp. 11-14), and which related primarily to proceedings involving tenured professors or faculty members dismissed for cause during a term appointment. Separate "Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments were covered by a 1971 statement, published in the Redbook (pp. 15-20). And due process was also an integral component of the Association's "Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure," the 1982 revision is found in the Redbook (pp. 21-30).
Due process is a system of procedures designed to insure a "clear, orderly, fair" means of reaching a decision. It is neither identical with nor a variant of legal due process. The latter derives from constitutional, statutory, or customary legal guarantees and tends to be rather rigid; the former stems from academic freedom and is necessarily flexible and informal.
Every AAUP chapter should insure that academic due process is available on campus for both faculty members (whether tenured or not) and students. And chapter leaders should be alert to threats to academic freedom.
Threats to Tenure
The role of tenure in preserving academic freedom is well known if not always well understood in the academic world. On this subject, an article entitled "The Significance of Tenure to the Quality of a First-Rate University" by former President Kingman Brewster, Jr., of Yale University is worth perusal. "If teaching," wrote Brewster,
is to be more than the retailing or the known, and if research is to seek real breakthroughs in the explanation of man and the cosmos, then teachers must be scholars, and scholarship must be more than the refinement of the inherited store of knowledge. If scholarship is to question assumptions and to take the risk of testing new hypotheses, then it cannot be held to a timetable which demand proof of pay-out to satisfy some review committee....
Boldness would suffer if the research and scholarship of a mature faculty were to be subject to periodic scorekeeping, on pain of dismissal if they did not score well. The what should be a venture in creative discovery would for almost everyone degenerate in to a safe-sided devotion to riskless footnote gathering. Authentication would replace discovery as the goal. The results might not startle the world, but they would be impressive in quantitative terms and invulnerable to devastating attack....
At its best the university expects a person literally to make a lifetime investment in his special way of looking at the human and natural experience, in the hope that he will contribute something of permanence to the understanding of some corner of the universe....
I have not been able to devise, not have I heard of, any regime of periodic review with the sanction of dismissal which would not have a disastrous effect. It would both dampen the willingness to take long-term intellectual risks and inhibit if not corrupt the free and spirited exchanges upon which the vitality of a community of scholars depends. This, not the aberrational external interference, is the threat to the freedom of the academic community which tenure seeks to mitigate. (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1972, pp. 381-83. See also the section entitled "Battleground 'Tenure'," part of the 1974 AAUP presidential address of Walter Adams, published in Ibid., Summer 1974, pp. 122-23, and remarks by former AAUP president David Fellman in Ibid., November 1977, pp. 324-25.)
There is a multi-faceted challenge to tenure which one may encounter at higher education institutions all over the United States. Articles in mass circulation periodicals, such as "Tenure Protects Academic Goof-offs" (USA Today, Feb. 15, 1990, p. 15A), reinforce widespread prejudices against the academic tenure system. (See also "Getting off Tenure Track," Newsweek, Jan. 31, 1983, p. 50, and "Troubled Times for Tenure," Time, Feb. 26, 1990, p. 72.) Hence, as revealed in a New York Times educational supplement on August 18, 1985, "an increasing number of colleges and universities" were backing away from tenure and were instead experimenting "with a variety of hiring managements," including increasing the pre-tenure probationary period, expanding the use of part-time adjunct instructors, employing professors only with renewable short-term contracts, and enlarging the number of temporary appointments. This trend shows no sign of diminishing. It has been discussed in the context of AAUP policy in the section on Committee W, above.
The Locus of Tenure
Certain aspects of tenure remain to be examined. One is the question: where is the proper location of tenure? Although the 1940 Statement is silent on the specific issue, the history of tenure contracts are made and ratified at the institutional level, rights and obligations under those contracts are also institution-wide in application, and terminations of tenured professors are to be in conformity with the institutional due process requirements. (See Redbook, pp. 3-4 and 23-28.)
Indeed, there is judicial precedent for the view that "Tenure is held in the institution and not in one's program or specialty." The key to this affirmation is the so-called "suitable position" rule, found in the AAUP's "1982 Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (Redbook, p. 24), which holds that "Before terminating an appointment because of financial exigency, the institution, with faculty participation, will make every effort to place the faculty member concerned in another suitable position within institution." (For elucidation see the AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1976, p. 14.)
However, tenure is not necessarily portable in multi-campus systems. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1986, p. 20a.)
In recent years some boards and administrators have endeavored to reduce the locus of tenure to the holder's department or academic program. This erosion of tenure rights should be resisted, and where it has already taken place it should be reversed. The argument for flexibility in the face of fluctuating fads and fashions of student curricular interests is not compelling. As Committee A has declared: "Were tenure to be so limited it would be no tenure at all; faculty members would labor under the constant and dispiriting risk of summary termination at an administrator's discretion when it points to an asserted need to reallocate resources. (Academe, July-Aug. 1985, pp. 8a-10a.)
Termination of Tenure for "Curricular" Reasons
Virtually the same objection applies to policies allowing the dismissal of tenured faculty members for "curricular" reasons. Rarely, except in cases of institution-wide financial exigency, should tenured professors not accused of infractions within the classification of "cause" have their service involuntarily ended and only then according to AAUP-delineated procedures. Nor would the countenancing of impossible infractions of tenure contracts by a faculty majority alter the issue. For, as an AAUP-spokesman asserted many years ago: "Principles of academic freedom and tenure are ... intended to protect individual rights, ... even against the action of a majority of a teacher's colleagues." (Ibid.)
Tenure Quotas
Some administrators have sought to limit the numbers of tenured professors on their campuses and to manipulate the tenure selection process through the use of so-called "tenure quotas." The AAUP has explicitly condemned "policies which establish a fixed maximum percentage of faculty members in nontenured service, and then releasing them because of a numerical limit on tenured positions prohibits their retention, has the effect of nullifying probation." Also "inimical to the principles of academic freedom which tenure serves, is the policy ... of withholding tenure from admittedly qualified candidates who have completed the maximum probationary period but retaining them in an kind of holding pattern, ... more vulnerable than their tenured colleagues to termination." (Redbook, pp. 37-39.)
"Term Tenure"
A primary obligation of the Association is to those "standards of academic freedom and tenure which it has been chiefly responsible for promulgating over half a century." Nor does it countenance policies or procedures which do not conform to AAUP standards merely because a faculty might have acquiesced in those rules. This includes any five-year contract system or so-called term tenure. (Academe, April 1980, p. 149.)
On Tenure in General
On the entire subject of academic tenure at the college level, the best authority is probably still the 276-page volume entitled Faculty Tenure, issued in 1973 by the Commission on Academic Tenure in Higher Education, and published at San Francisco by Jossey-Bass. The commission's recommendation, however, to include "ranges" or "limits" on tenure of no more than on-half to two-thirds of an institutional faculty is strongly opposed by the AAUP. For a cogent analysis of this volume see "Reviewing Tenure" by W.J. Kilgore, AAUP Bulletin, Autumn 1973, pp. 339-45, and "Tenure: A Summary Explanation and 'Defense'" by William Van Alstyne, Ibid., Autumn 1971, pp. 328-33. Stimulating is The Constitutional Status of Academic Tenure (Salem, N.H., Ayer Co. 1977), a collection of writings on the subject.
The Rights of Probationary Faculty
One occasionally encounters criticism that the tenure system provides a monopoly of most of the available rights, privileges, and power for senior faculty leaving little for probationary faculty. Hence, the argument goes, junior faculty would benefit more without a tenure system. But the AAUP has maintained that probationary faculty have many rights, including the right (1) to the same academic freedoms as other members of the faculty; (2) to be heard on matters of institutional policy; (3) to have the terms of their appointments explicitly stated in writing; (4) to an evaluation by their academic colleagues before being given notice--which must be timely--of nonreappointment; (5) to a decision on tenure within a reasonable period; (6) to academic due process; and (7) to be considered as officers of their institutions. These and other rights have been "largely secured for probationary faculty members by the AAUP." (AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1969, pp. 123-24.) For a detailed elucidation of the Association's position on tenure and promotion rights of probationary faculty members, especially in the light of the Roth and Sindermann decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, see analyses by William Van Styne in Ibid., Autumn 1972, pp. 267-78, and 367.
Academic Freedom of Students
The AAUP has not confined its protective presence to professors. In 1960 the Council created a Committee on Faculty Responsibility for the Academic Freedom of Students, which prepared several draft statements on the subject, two of which were published. Eventually sponsorship of the AAUP's position was enlarged to include the Association of American Colleges, the United States Student Association, and other groups, and in 1967 the AAUP followed with a policy document entitled "Joint Statement on Rights and Freedom of Students," designed to "enumerate the essential provisions for student freedom to learn," which included access to higher education, freedom of inquiry and expression, freedom of association, and protections for student participation in institutional government, work on student publication, and citizenship rights. Also covered in the statement were student records, improper academic evaluations, and improper disclosures; and procedural standards for disciplinary proceedings were provided. In a separate section of the "1982 Recommended Institutional Regulations" additional protections for graduate or teaching assistants were included. (Redbook, pp. 29, 153-58; AAUP Bulletin, Sept. 1964, pp. 254-57 and Dec. 1965, pp. 447-49. See Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 3-4, for a brief reference to an AAUP amicus brief presented to a U.S. appeals court in which sharp limitations on the roles of academic administrations in grading students are asserted as constitutionally required.)
Evaluations of Professors
The 1940 Statement stipulates that academic freedom "carries with it duties correlative with rights." In order to determine whether these duties are being adequately performed, some form of evaluation is needed. Institutional policies relating to tenure, pay, and promotion usually emphasize expectations regarding teaching, scholarship, and service, but little attention was paid in AAUP literature for many years to measuring the worth of individual scholarship or service. The assumption appears to have been that the former is adequately assessed in peer reviews and the latter, generally quite visible, is hard to misconstrue. With respect to measuring the effectiveness of teaching, however, there has been considerable debate, and on this subject the AAUP has established a policy. (On the subject of evaluation of professors, see also the discussion of higher education reform in the section above dealing with the work of Committee T.)
Evaluations of Professors by Students
During the 1960's amid widespread discussion of how to achieve higher education "reform," proponents of change advocated much greater student influence on academic decision-making. In the AAUP Bulletin one critic of "poor or outdated, but tenured" professors wrote approvingly of increased student demands for "a voice in deciding what to do with such inevitable problems of the job security system .... Witness the rise in published editions of faculty evaluations by students." Only if "meaningful student participation in academic governance," leading to the realignment of "the reward system for faculty so that ... the student advisor is as highly rewarded as the researcher," was speedily introduced into colleges and universities, this observed warned, could chaos be avoided on the campuses; otherwise, "militancy and violence [would] become the order of the day." (AAUP Bulletin, March, 1969, pp. 25-26.)
Out of the AAUP's Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication came comments supportive of student ratings of professors' teaching, with suggestions for specific mechanisms for conducting such evaluations. (AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1969, pp. 439-44.) The literature on the subject grew apace, with such books as Student Evaluation of Instruction by Kenneth O. Doyle, Jr., (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath Co., 1975) obtaining highly favorable notices in the AAUP Bulletin (Nov. 1977, pp. 329-30). An entire issue of Academe (Oct. 1979) focused on the subject of student evaluations. One contributor, a former president of the Association, asserted that there was "a substantial amount of evidence to the effect that favorable evaluations of teachers by students are unreliable," for experiments had "proved that students prefer vague discussions to rigorous arguments, and favor the learning of routine procedures over analysis of basic concepts." Two other authors labeled student ratings of faculty "demeaning, arbitrary, and demoralizing," bound to lower academic standards and corrupt learning. Another writer agreed, calling the current student evaluation movement "an ugly force toward mediocrity" at best, and at worst "the nastiest kind of tool for intimidation." (Ibid., Feb. 1980, p. 59.)
"Students know," Steven Cahn argued, "if teachers are likable, but not if they are knowledgeable; they know if lectures are enjoyable, but not if they are reliable." Hence they are incompetent to judge the worth of teaching. Moreover, to invite students to participate in the rewards process for professors is to expose the latter to intimidation. Teachers, who are "expected to question students' pet beliefs, expose their prejudices, challenge them with demanding assignments, and evaluate their work rigorously, ... cannot educate those they fear." No professor should be put in a position that encourages propitiating students in returns for their favor. "A teacher's authority must be respected and protected." (Academe, May-June 1982, pp. 13-14.) Cahn also wrote (ibid., Nov.-Dec. 1982, p. 28) "that to invite students to participate formally in the evaluation of their teachers constitutes a serious threat to academic freedom." (For references to recently published materials supporting Cahn's position, see his article "Faculty Members Should Be Evaluated by Their Peers, Not by Their Students" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 14, 1987, pp. B2-B3. For a student's reasoned response, see ibid., Nov. 4, 1987, p. B2.)
As another critic of "overemphasis" on student evaluations maintained, these instruments, evidencing "the notion that half of all faculty members are below-average," are convenient weapons for administrators "with manipulative abilities" to employ against professors, and are "contributing to an erosion of good teaching and good scholarship, to a loss of respect for teachers, and to a weakening of the faculty position in campus government." (Academe, July-Aug. 1988, pp. 44.)
Not so, was the verdict of a psychology professor who had devoted years of close attention to the subject. "Student ratings," he declared, "are highly valid as indices of achievement of attitudinal and motivational goals of education. They are reasonably valid as indices of achievement of cognitive goals. Judgments of the appropriateness of content, goals, and level of achievement are probably more competently made by peers." (Ibid., Oct. 1979, pp. 377, 383, and 390.)
Another supporter of student evaluations believed that as honest and accurate indices of student perceptions, such instruments, intelligently employed "solely for information relating to effectiveness in reaching the students," were vital tools in making faculty personnel decisions. (Ibid., May-June 1987, pp. 19-22.) Indeed, a historian wrote, such evaluations "must be utilized to judge teaching effectiveness, ... at the conclusion of every semester, not on an infrequent basis." (Ibid., July-Aug. 1987, p. 10.)
In rebuttal to this recommendation, however, Robert Glassman warned that "with the overuse of student course evaluations, we are in a destructively competitive bazaar, ... under constant temptation to dilute course material and set conditions for invidious comparisons with other professors." (Ibid., July-Aug. 1988, p. 44.)
The AAUP has officially accepted student evaluations as legitimate sources of data on professors' teaching performance. (Redbook, pp. 168-69.) But the Association's "Statement on Teaching Evaluation," adopted in 1975, insists that institutional expectations of the teachers must be made clear, that adequate "conditions and support necessary to excellent teaching" must be furnished, that evaluations of teaching should include "a primary though not exclusive role" for faculty members, and that any evaluation instruments "should include (1) an accurate factual description of what an individual does as teacher, (2) various measures of the effectiveness of these efforts, and (3) fair consideration of the relation between these efforts and the institution's and department's expectations and support." Assessing instructional effectiveness, the statement avers, can include efforts to measure the degree of student learning, reports "from trained observers, faculty colleagues, and students" on teaching performance, classroom visitation, self-evaluation, and outside opinions. "Student perceptions," the statement continues, "are a prime source of information ... [which] can provide continuing insights ...," and can be obtained informally or through questionnaires directed to both students and alumni, but "faculty members should obtain student opinion." Moreover, it is important that data be obtained "over a range of teaching assignments and over a period of time." And it should be understood that distinguished teaching "is integral with scholarship, has a way of getting outside classroom confines, and may exemplify the highest meaning of service." (Redbook, pp. 167-70, and AAUP Bulletin, Aug. 1975, pp. 200-02.)
"Assessment" of Faculty Performance
Implicit in the above policy statement is the assumption that formal institutional evaluations of teaching may include all professors, non-tenured and tenured alike. This notwithstanding, Committee A, "while recognizing the legitimacy of ongoing evaluation of all faculty members by faculty peers," strongly opposed any "formal institutional procedure for periodic review of the performance of faculty members who have been granted indefinite tenure." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1983, p. 12a.) A large majority of the participants at a 1983 conference of members of the American Council on Education and the AAUP agreed, in many different ways--for merit salary increases, promotions, and institutional academic awards, as well as by external granting agencies, publishers, reviewers, nominating committees, and bestowers of prices and invitations to speak, serve, or otherwise participate in a prestigious activity. Professors were evaluated by students, colleagues, administrators, juries, scholars, and other referees. To add "an overlay of a formal system of periodic evaluation on existing procedures would incur unacceptable costs," including jeopardizing academic freedom. "No system of faculty evaluation should be permitted to weaken or undermine ... academic tenure and the protections of academic freedom it provides." Hence decisions resulting from evaluations of faculty performance "should not be used as a ground to dismiss tenured faculty," or as a basis for "other disciplinary sanctions," the imposition of which were governed by such established procedures as those enumerated in the 1940 Statement of Principles and the 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings. In a formal statement of Association policy, the Council endorsed these conclusions. (Ibid., Nov.-Dec. 1983, pp. 1a-14a.)
On Evaluation of Tenured Faculty
The purpose of periodic evaluations of tenured faculty members should be to determine their engagement and scholarly activity, not the quality of their publications or public appearances. Merit pay is necessarily tied to periodic evaluations but rank and tenure should rarely be threatened by such devices. For the effect of questioning the eligibility of tenured professors to continue their work without concern for their job status for any reason other than "cause" would be inimical to academic freedom. Indeed, a strong argument against any form of periodic review of tenured faculty members which might carry with it serious penalties was advanced during the 1970s by Kingman Brewster, Jr., who wrote:
The dramatic image of the university under siege from taxpayers, politicians, or even occasional alumni is a vivid but not the most difficult aspect of the pressures which tend to erode academic freedom. The more subtle condition ... is that faculty members, once they have proved their potential during a period of junior probation, should not be beholden to anyone, especially Departmental Chairmen, Deans, Provosts, or Presidents for favor, let alone for survival. [They should only] be guided by their own intellectual curiosity, insight, and conscience. In the development of their ideas they should not be looking over their shoulders either in hope of favor or in fear of disfavor from anyone other than the judgment of an informed and critical posterity.... (AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1972, pp. 381-83.)
A similar commentary by another administrator appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education for October 19, 1988 (pp. B1-B2). Asserting that "assessment is based on fundamental misdiagnosis of the malaise of American higher education," Jon Westling asked whether anyone could seriously "believe that the failure of colleges and universities to produce adequately educated young people is the consequence of our failure to develop precise instruments to measure what we are doing?" Most of those who desired to impose assessment on professors, he added, "are incapable of recognizing education and are therefore incapable of measuring it. Assessment projects typically try to identify a list of 'educational outcomes' and then devise a standard means to measure them. They assume that education means students assimilating an masse a body of facts and a set of cognitive skills." Thus a measurement of only a few facets of knowledge is mistakenly thought to represent evidence of wisdom and understanding. Of course it does not. (For references to more on this subject, see Academe, Feb.-March 1981, pp. 24-26.)
Despite the implication in the AAUP's "Statement on Teaching Evaluation" that the Association to some extent has countenanced assessment, the General Secretary has expressed a concern "that such constraints will ensure a 'dimming down' of curricula and instruction in the university as it has in the schools." Moreover, Ernst Benjamin has declared, "the assessment movement threatens academic integrity" both by diverting attention "from the inadequacy or the misdirection" of higher education funding and by an increasing government intrusion into institutional curricula and academic direction. Benjamin notes:
More sophisticated assessment advocates propose that we forestall externally mandated standardization by encouraging faculty-developed and administered assessment based on faculty-developed curricula and objectives. But that, of course, is what we already have. No undergraduate students in the world are examined with the frequency and thoroughness of American students....
If assessment provided the remedy for the inadequacies of undergraduate instruction, one might accept the ultimate reasonableness of this intrusion. But even at its best, assessment would be diagnosis of known ills, not a cure, and in the meantime, preoccupation with assessment distracts attention from truly needed cures. Indeed, it compounds our problems by subjecting imaginative and potential recruits to unacceptable bureaucratic constraints; and this at the very time we require a new generation of faculty which, even now, we lack resources to educate and recruit. (E. Benjamin to W. Maxwell, Jan 4, 1990, and see also his observations in Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1989, p. 47.)
Church-Related Institutions
The Curran case at the Catholic University of America during the 1980s highlighted potential problems of academic freedom, tenure, and faculty governance at some church-related institutions of higher learning. Since according to one authority, such schools "teach some 600,000 students" (not to mention colleges and universities affiliated with other religious denominations), this is a serious issue, one recognized by the 1940 Statement of Principles in the declaration: "Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment." Thirty years later the AAUP and the AAC qualified the exception by asserting that "Most church-related institutions not longer need or desire the departure from the principle of academic freedom implied in the 1940 Statement, and we do not now endorse such a departure." (Redbook, pp. 3 and 5; Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1988, p. 15.)
In an article entitled "Academic Freedom: The Catholic University and Catholic Theology," reprinted in Academe (April 1980, pp. 126-35), the Reverend Charles E. Curran warned that "if interpreted literally," an apostolic Constitution of 1979, supplemented by a proposed new code of cannon law, would prohibit decisions about faculty competency from being rendered by peers, and would instead require that "promotion and tenure depend on judgments made by Church authority as such." Such legislation threatened "the autonomy of all Catholic colleagues and universities."
The issue of abortion, which was widely debated during the 1984 U.S. presidential campaign, was treated as "the critical issue of the moment" by a group of Catholic bishops and by Archbishop John J. O'Connor of New York, who declared: "There is no leeway as far as the Catholic Church is concerned. ... Abortion is death." In response, Catholic theologians stepped forward to maintain that their church was "not monolithic" on the abortion issue, and Professor Daniel C. Maguire of Marquette University, former president of the Society of Christian Ethics and a widely published author on moral and social issues including abortion, co-authored an advertisement published in the New York Times on November 7, 1984, which affirmed "a diversity of opinions within the Church" on the abortion issue, and stated that Catholics should not be penalized for publicly dissenting from hierarchical statements on such questions. (Academe, July-Aug. 1986, pp. 1a-13a.)
During the following summer, Professor Maguire was scheduled to participate in conferences at St. Martin's College, the College of St. Scholastica, Boston College, and Villanova University. In each case the engagement was canceled by the president of the institution. A special subcommittee of the AAUP's Committee A found "the message ... sent to the academic community" unmistakable. "One who speaks out publicly on abortion in opposition to the officially held church position is not likely to be welcome on a Catholic campus." (Ibid.)
Meanwhile, Professor Curran was suspended from teaching at Catholic University by its board of trustees after Vatican authorities ruled that he could no longer instruct students of Catholic theology because he had differed with Church teachings on sexual ethics. "Academic freedom," wrote one commentator, "is seriously at risk today in Catholic higher education." (Academe, July-Aug. 1988, pp. 4-5; Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 30, 1987, p. A48.)
The issues raised by the Maguire and Curran cases have received considerable attention within the AAUP. (Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 8-22 and July-Aug. 1988, pp. 8-9, 23-28, and 37-38.) Committee A devoted portions of at least three meetings during 1987 and 1988 to a reconsideration of the "limitations clause" of the 1940 Statement. In a subcommittee report published in the fall of 1988 an institution was said to have no "'right' under the 1940 Statement simultaneously to invoke the limitations clause and to claim that it is an institution of learning to be classed with institutions that impose no such restriction." In instances where an "institution is sponsored by a religious denomination for the professional education of its own clergy," it was still true that "the housing of an unfree school within a free university is a contradiction: it may be in the university but, being unfree, it is not of the university, and it has no business being there." Indeed, whether the limitations clause was invoked to permit departures from the standards of the 1940 Statement for the entire institution, or merely for a portion of it, such schools had no "moral right to proclaim themselves as authentic seats of higher learning." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1988, pp. 50-59.)
As for the place of religion in the curriculum, Lonnie Kliever declared in a leading article in Academe (Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 8-11) that religious studies had "a rightful place in the academy" only if they were "pluralistic, comparative, interdisciplinary, and objective."
Complicating the problems with church-related institutions, the National Labor Relations Board had taken the position, thus far uncontradicted by judicial process, that not only do such schools have no obligation to recognize unions as collective bargaining agents for their faculties, but also that professors in such institutions may be dismissed or disciplined for religious reasons without judicial interference, even when such teachers are union members. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 60-62.)
Government Interference
An aspect of the limitations clause problem as yet unplumbed by the Association is its application to institutional aims other than religious ones. As suggested in a letter to the AAUP journal, "one of these others is defense. There are a considerable number of military institutions in the business of post-secondary schooling ..., yet there has been little discussion of the state of academic freedom in theses institutions, especially of how the limitations clause applies or does not apply." (Academe, July-Aug. 1988, p.9.)
As early as 1965, the Association published a statement "On Preventing Conflicts of Interest in Government Sponsored Research at Universities" which discussed possible conflict situations, such as "favoring of outside interests," "distribution of effort," and "consulting," and set standards of university responsibility in such instances. (Redbook, pp. 83-85.) Restrictions on Reagan-era federal agencies on the open communication of unclassified ideas and information were deprecated on academic freedom grounds in a statement on "Federal Restriction on Research: Academic Freedom and National Security." (Redbook, pp. 62-65 and Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1982, pp. 18a-20a.) A severe critique of President Reagan's Executive Order 12356, prescribing a method for classifying information on national security grounds, attacked the resulting "Enlargement of the Classified Information System" of the U.S. government as undermining academic freedom. (Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1983, pp. 9a-14a.) And a presidential directive on "Safeguarding National Security Information," which established a mechanism for limiting the release of classified information to the public by means of a system of pre-publication agreements and prior review of virtually all post-government service writings by government officials was lambasted in a Committee A subcommittee report entitled "government Censorship and 'Academic Freedom'" (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1983, pp. 15a-17a.)
In a statement endorsed by the Council as AAUP policy, committee A concluded that "grave harm" had been done to academic freedom by the aforementioned government restrictions, which had inhibited "that robust search for truth which is the genuine source of our scientific and technological achievements.... They lead us in the direction of those societies with which we have traditionally contrasted ourselves.... The repressive nature of the [Reagan] administration's actions undermines the foundation of free government." (Academe, March-April 1984, p. 32a.)
Such concerns led Association leaders to adopt as the theme of the Seventy-Second Annual Meeting of the AAUP "The Government and the University." Among the problems considered on that occasion and in a subsequent issue of Academe were the adverse implications for academic freedom of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, Executive Order 12356, "The Muzzling of American Science" by the proliferating use of government export controls, and the onerous application of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 to foreign scholars, artists, and other creative personalities. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1986, pp. 9-26 and 2a-3a.)
Unplumbed on that occasion but still in the minds of academics during the 1980s was the teaching of college courses by officials of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA recruiting on campus, and CIA contracts with higher education institutions. (The Nation, Dec. 12, 1987, pp. 719-20.) As a AAUP spokesman suggested in 1981 in connection with a report on a statutory system proposed by the National Security Agency that would have required prior review of articles and monographs relating to cryptology, "the entanglement between the federal government and scientific researchers is fraught with renewed dangers of efforts by government agencies to restrict the open communication or publication of research findings on the basis of national security concerns." (Academe, Dec. 1981, 371-82.) Faculty members seeking guidance in assessing the extent and character of possible threats to academic freedom by government agencies may consult one or more of the above AAUP documents or may contact the Washington office for further advice.
Corporate Relationships
As for problems arising from "Corporate Funding of Academic Research," interested professors may consult a report with this title, produced by a subcommittee of Committee A in 1983, which envisaged eventually some AAUP guidelines to assist "a faculty to minimize its own potential conflict of interest; and (2) a suggested list of principles that should govern corporate-university research arrangements." Although such guidelines and principles have not yet been approved by the Association, this report presents suggestions which may provide a foundation for such an endeavor, and which, meanwhile, may guide the behavior of individual professors and the enactments of faculty bodies. (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1983, 18a-23a.)
Outside Speakers
Many governing boards have adopted regulations setting forth conditions under which outsiders may deliver speeches on campus. Although most of these limitations do not explicitly bar "subversive speakers (defined by a Tennessee governing board member as being people who "advocate the overthrow of the things I personally believe in"), rejections or harassments of a variety of controversial speakers has taken place through the years at large and small institutions in every region of the United States. Perhaps the simplest guideline, in the words of former Chancellor Alexander Heard of Vanderbilt University, is to "think of the campus platform in the same terms as the library." (AAUP Bulletin, Dec. 1965, p. 418 and Sept. 1966, p. 297.)
Also enlightening was a report by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale University, chaired by the historian C. Vann Woodward, which declared:
The primary function of a university is to discover and disseminate knowledge by means of research and teaching. ... The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom: for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views....
Above all, every member of the University has an obligation to permit free expression in the university. No member has a right to prevent such expression. ... even when some members of the university community fail to meet their social and ethical responsibilities, the paramount obligation of the university is to protect their right to free expression. (AAUP Bulletin, Spring 1976, pp. 28-30.)
Finally, Committee A has offered guidance regarding outside speakers in the form of a statement asserting "its expectation that all members of the academic community will respect the right of others to listen to those who have been invited to speak on campus and will indicate disagreement not by disruptive action ... but by reasoned debate and discussion as befits academic freedom in a community of higher learning." (Academe, March-April 1983, pp. 5-6.)
Administrative Alterations in Faculty Working Conditions
Some professors have suffered from administration-dictated alterations in their working conditions which they have considered violations of their academic freedom, if not also of their legal rights. A New York court, however, refused in a recent decision to infer a contractual commitment for particular amenities, in this case specific office space, where there was no written commitment. While tenure was the source of many rights, the court ruled, "it cannot be the wellspring of every conceivable academic amenity and privilege." An AAUP Counsel has written that although "an institution should not deprive a faculty member of resources under the guise of allocation decisions when the objective is rather to impose a severe sanction on the individual," probably the best remedy for affected professors is to invoke an institutional grievance procedure. For, "absent some unusual and compelling circumstances," a legal right to employment amenities not contractually specified would be difficult to uphold in the courts. (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1987, pp. 48-49.)
If the denial of resources is clearly punitive, however, and if it can be established as an act of retaliation against a faculty member for exercising his or her free speech on a matter of public concern, construed narrowly, and not merely speaking out on internal institutional issues, then there may be first amendment protection available in the courts. The same would apply to notice of dismissal or other sanctions, provided the above conditions were present. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 58-59.)
Litigation and Judicially Compelled Disclosure
As a result of the imprisonment of James Dinnan, a University of Georgia professor, who refused to comply with a judicial order to divulge how he voted regarding the tenure and candidacy of a colleague, the AAUP Council adopted a "Preliminary Statement on Judicially Compelled Disclosure in the Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments." The "facts and circumstances asserted by the complainant," the statement asserted, "ought to raise a sufficient inference that some impermissible consideration was likely to have played a role to overcome the presumption in favor of the integrity of the academic process." (Academe, Feb.-March 1981, pp. 27-28.) As an AAUP spokesman later declared, the Association opposed permitting "a hallow allegation of discrimination to intrude into the sensitive deliberations of a peer review committee" without a preliminary demonstration "of possible merit to the individual's discrimination claim." Unfortunately, some appeals courts have eliminated all protection for confidential peer review discussions and materials. And the U.S. Supreme Court on January 9, 1990 unanimously ruled in University of Pennsylvania v. EEOC that "tenure review materials related to a discrimination must routinely be made available to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." In its decision the court rejected the AAUP's amicus agreement in favor of balancing the desirability of "eliminating discrimination in the peer review process" against the need to protect "the candid expression of faculty peers." Hence, as the AAUP General Counsel observed, "candor in the peer review process" might well in the future be "inhibited." (Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1990, p. 5 and March-April 1983, pp. 11a-12a; AAUP Brief in Univ. of Pa. v. EEOC, published at Washington D.C. by Wilson-Epes Printing Co., June 20, 1989.)
Contributing to this challenge to academic freedom has been the proliferation in recent years of state open meetings and open record laws, frequently characterized as "sunshine" legislation. Most of these laws shield personnel records from uninhibited public scrutiny, but some allow virtually complete access. An example may be in a 1986 decision (Harber v. Garland: Chancery Court of Shelby County, Tennessee, no. 91011-1) in which the issue was whether faculty personnel files at Memphis State University were open records available for public inspection. Despite AAUP arguments that "the community of higher education has traditionally been accorded protection and dissemination of knowledge," and that unless procedures for the selection and evaluation of professors were shielded from involuntary disclosure "any political or religious zealot could scrutinize the most sensitive and candid personnel materials concerning faculty members in the state university system for evidence of nonconformity with that person's notion of orthodoxy, ... to the substantial detriment of protected academic freedom interests," the court ruled that "the plaintiff is entitled to the records requested." (Neal Small, Chancellor, Tenth Chancery Div., Pt. 1, Memphis, TN, to Ms. Ann H. Franke et al, April 14, 1986.)
Similar decisions, such as a 1986 Supreme Court ruling that documents related to a faculty tenure decision could not be withheld from the EEOC, led an associate counsel for the AAUP to declare that discrimination litigation in higher education would probably increase in volume, "and, every time, we're going to face the question of access to records." The high court's Franklin and Marshall College decision, Ann Franke asserted, might well insure that institutions of higher learning would grant tenure "to less able teacher-scholars in the years ahead." For those who evaluated tenure candidates, "without the protection of confidentiality, will most likely be less candid in their assessment or, worse, not willing at all to make an evaluation." (Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 1986, pp. 43-44, and Sept. 24, 1986, pp. 13-18.)
"This reluctance," a Committee A statement averred,
is grounded not, as some have suggested, in a faint-heartedness, but rather in common decency and a professional concern for the standing and reputation of the candidate. As the dissemination of one's negative remarks grows wider, one loses control over their impact and risks the possibility of unnecessary and unintended injury to the candidate.
And there is also the matter of privacy for the candidate for tenure, employment renewal, promotion, a pay raise, or a new position, as well as the understandable reluctance of such persons "to disclose publicly proposed research plans or preliminary findings before their publication." (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, p. 52.) Because of such considerations, Committee A recommended "that deliberations on matters of faculty status be conducted in private." Those engaged in such deliberations were "obliged actively to consult with those directly or indirectly affected by their actions and, upon request, to provide a [written] statement of reasons for the decisions and opportunity for "review" by an independent faculty body. (Ibid., p. 53, and see also "On Open Meetings," Academe, Jan.-Feb. 1986, pp. 3a-4a.)
Colleges and universities frequently maintain files on faculty members in most or all five categories: directory, salary, evaluation, career, and outside income. The most sensitive items are those pertaining to evaluations. It is here that state laws and judicial discovery orders in litigation can be troublesome in pitting affirmative action, equity, and public interest considerations against invasion of privacy, academic freedom, tenure, and due process concerns. Professors in public institutions across the nation are divided, sometimes bitterly, on the question of access versus openness. (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 18, 1987, pp. 3a-4a.) Besides its 1981 statement on judicially compelled disclosure, cited above, the AAUP has adopted, in the form of Annual Meeting endorsement, a statement on "Open or Closed Hearings" in faculty dismissal proceedings, which sets forth various considerations in favor and against openness and offers guidelines to hearing committees to assist them in deciding whether or not to close their deliberations to outsiders. (AAUP Bulletin, Summer 1970, p. 167.) These guidelines are of course subject to the strictures of applicable state open meetings laws.
An instructive article by Harlan Cleveland, balancing "The Costs and Benefits of Openness" in regard to academic meetings, offers some suggestions about how to resolve "disputes over the application of sunshine laws" on campuses. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 23-28.) Also helpful is a statement by the board of directors of the American Council on Education (No. 7, Dec. 1981, available from the national AAUP office) entitled "Confidentiality of College and University Faculty Personnel Files: Its Appropriate Role in Institutional Affairs," which points out that "confidentiality is not secrecy" and sets forth considerations in favor of limited access to "evaluative materials, as well as the identity of authors of letters, in deliberations concerning the appointment, promotion, and granting of tenure to faculty members."
AAUP chapter and conference leaders should be aware of the open records and open meetings controversies and prepared not only to offer guidance to their colleagues when such issues arise locally but also to try to influence legislators and academic administrators to give due weight in treating these matters to those considerations deemed important by spokespersons for the Association.
In these litigious times, the courts are being asked to intercede not only to compel disclosure of records relating to professors' performance evaluations, but also to give or deny administrators the right to change student grades. An important decision on the subject, Parate V. Isibor (1989), acknowledged "some measure of First Amendment protection" for a professor's right to assign a grade to a student in that teacher's course. Although the court ruled that if administrators considered a grade improper, they might change it themselves, it declared that such supervisory personnel may not compel a professor to violate his or her own judgment by forcing the alteration of a grade. The AAUP's own Committee A maintains that no grade ought to be changed without faculty authorization, a position upheld in a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision. (Academe, May-June 1987, pp. 39-44 and Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 47-50 and March-April 1989, pp. 76-77.)
Members of the Association periodically receive reports on litigation undertaken in behalf of the profession, sometimes in the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of these reports are quite detailed and cite numerous precedents. (See, for example, AAUP Bulletin, Winter 1963, pp. 309-27, and Academe, March-April 1983, pp. 1a-12a and Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 57-63, the latter a single article in an entire issue devoted to "The University and the Law.") Excerpts from a few of the AAUP's approximately eighty amicus briefs filed since 1959 in state and federal courts may be found in Academe, May-June 1989, pp. 31-33, and in the Redbook, pp. 181-83. In 1987 the Association petitioned the U.S. Senate not confirm Presidents Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court because of a multitude of discrepancies between the nominee's views and AAUP principles. (Academe, Nov.-Dec. 1987, p. 4.) In November 1987 the Council approved a policy that called for the screening by the AAUP of future Supreme Court nominees. (Ibid., Jan.-Feb. 1988, p. 34.)
Professors who expect legal assistance from the Association should heed a former General Counsel, who has written:
To advocate effectively costs some money and a great deal of effort by staff lawyers and volunteers. The Association must therefore screen cases carefully to determine where its limited resources can be employed most effectively. Only when a factual record presents issues clearly, when an issue is of special significance to professors, and when the court is one whose decisions will be heeded widely can we, as a general proposition, afford to go into battle for the principle involved. (Academe, Feb, 1979, p. 75.)
And faculty members contemplating litigation should also be aware that lawsuits may lead to countersuits designed to force the plantiff to pay institutional attorney's fees. (Ibid., Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 62-63.) For more light on this subject, see the section in this handbook dealing with the work of Committee W, the chair of which has alleged a pattern of "overt hostility of judges towards academic plaintiffs." (Ibid., Jan.-Feb. 1988, pp. 47-48.) And notice also that AAUP leaders "do not unreservedly admire the increasing resort to the courts in academic disputes." Nevertheless, the Association's policies and principles have considerable influence, overall, in the courts. (Redbook, x-xii.)
The AAUP has declared unequivocally that "Colleges and universities have responsibility for assuring legal representation and indemnification to members of their faculty who are subject to lawsuits stemming from their profession performance in institutional service." (Redbook, p. 72.) But, although some institutions do have policies that promise this protection, difficulties may arise in instances of colleagues suing one another, when faculty members are involved in litigation against administrators, or in civil rights and other cases in which the employer is a party. The best protection a professor engaged in litigation can have, besides a familiarity with the state of the law in relation to the particular circumstance, and consultation with the AAUP's Washington legal staff, is professional liability insurance. (Also helpful may be a "legal deskbook" such as the one reviewed favorably in Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 65-66.)
Fear of being sued should not, writes a former AAUP general counsel, dissuade professors from writing candid references. One can indeed be sued for writing "supposedly libelous statements in a solicited letter of recommendation." But "you do not stand much chance of losing, if you are reasonably attentive to the accuracy of what you say. Truth is defense, even if the words are hurtful. What is more, there is trend toward requiring the plaintiff to establish that the words are not true, rather than ... making the defendant ... establish the defense of truth." This notwithstanding, "the crushing burden of defending a lawsuit under any circumstances" suggests that "a faculty member probably has a legal right" to be indemnified by his or her academic institution against have to bear such financial burdens, in cases "of good faith performances of a professional obligation to respond to appropriate inquiries." Such protection should include legal defense, financing any agree-upon settlement, and paying "damages if there is such an untoward outcome." Professor Ralph Brown urged professors not to "be intimidated" by the threat of litigation. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1986, pp. 31-32.)
Professors should abide by institutional policies when disciplining students for cheating plagiarism. This means becoming familiar with the appropriate sections of the school's faculty and student handbooks, and informing students in writing at the start of each college term of one's policies regarding dishonesty, absences, or anything else which might lead to punitive action. One should also know the limitations on the posting of grades and the release of other information about students in the so-called Buckley amendment, which is federal law for higher education institutions.
When legal assistance is imperative, professors or their attorneys may consult one of the two staff attorneys in the AAUP's Washington office, "who serve as a resource to chapters, conferences, and individuals across the country with questions about higher education matters," and who because of their expertise are frequently "of substantial assistance to private practitioners." Highly important matters will be likely to lead to consultation with the Association's General Counsel, who is an eminent attorney serving a two-year appointed term corresponding to the terms of the AAUP's elected officers. The general counsel is not only the Association's principal legal advisor, he or she also reviews and approves the work of staff lawyers, subject to the final determination of the president of the organization. Finally, the general counsel is responsible for defending the AAUP in litigation against it, writes or approves briefs in its behalf, and does the same regarding contracts to which it is a party. ("Report of the General Counsel," June 1, 1985 - May 31, 1986; and "Council Guidelines Concerning the Authority and Duties of General Counsel, As Adopted by Council, June 1984.")
Faculty Access to Accrediting Bodies
When campus conditions are such that a professor is compelled to bring to them the attention of an accrediting organization, sanctions directed by administrators against the whistle-blower may follow. Those who believe that the First Amendment should absolutely protect a faculty member's free speech in this regard should realize that courts have ruled that an "employee of a pubic college or university, at least, may indeed "be disciplined or dismissed for speech that addresses only personal or private concerns." Hence, to obtain judicial protection for faculty communications to an accrediting body, it may be necessary to convince a judge that the matters dealt with were entirely "of public concern" and therefore constitutionally protected. (Academe, July-Aug. 1988, pp. 42-43.)
Misconceptions of Academic Freedom
At an AAUP-sponsored symposium held in Austin, Texas, in October 1987, participant tended to agree that external forces, local administrators, and predatory litigators were not the only threats to academic freedom. "As the profession has become more litigious," one speaker observed, "the whole tenure process is fraught with ... conflicts." Some professor appeared disposed to cite academic freedom as a justification for irresponsible behavior or unwarranted privileges. And lawsuits seemed to be proliferating, producing a chilling effect on free speech. Although there was disagreement over the scope and meaning of the term "academic freedom," none of the scholars present suggested that it permitted faculty members "to do whatever they want." (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 1987, pp. A15-A16.)
Nor does academic freedom allow professors entirely to say whatever they want. For outspoken faculty members, relying on the well-established principle of constitutional law that a public employee cannot be dismissed in retaliation for exercising first amendment rights, ought to take warning from the recent trend in the courts against faculty plaintiffs in cases of dismissal or denial of tenure. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, as indicated above, that only speech on matters of public concern, not merely "internal affairs," is protected. (Academe, Sept.-Oct. 1987, pp. 58-59.)
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