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." ( AAUP 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. (AAUP 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.")
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