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. 215-217.)
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. 215-220, and Redbook, pp. 52-62, 179-180, and 105-112.)
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. 177-183 and Summer 1972, pp. 160-170.)
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. 162-163.)
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 179-180.)
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. 173-174; Aug. 1974, p. 162; and Dec. 1975, pp. 316-321.)
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. 339-342; Feb. 1977, pp. 25-26; Sept. 1978, pp. 177-178; 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. 231-236), 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. 326-332; and Academe, Dec. 1981, pp. 351-354.)
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. 305-315; 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. 280-282.)
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. 156-159.)
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. 157-158; 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. 160-161.)
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.)
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