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. 161-170), 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)
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