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AAUP Updates

As an apparent reaction to student protests since last October, a number of college and university administrations have hastily enacted overly restrictive policies dealing with the rights to assemble and protest on campus. These policies, which go beyond reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression.

AAUP president Todd Wolfson sent a letter to University of California president Michael Drake urging the administration to settle a fair contract with UC system librarians represented by University Council-AFT (UC-AFT), unit 17.

The AAUP has released a new Statement on Academic Boycotts, which reconsiders the AAUP's prior categorical opposition to academic boycotts set forth in the 2006 report On Academic Boycotts. The AAUP's revised policy maintains that academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom and can instead be legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.

The ascension of J. D. Vance to the Republican presidential ticket has brought the decades-long battle to define the future of American higher education to a tipping point. With Vance, American Far-Right authoritarians have succeeded in elevating a fascist who vows to “aggressively attack universities in this country” to within striking distance of their goal: the annihilation of American higher education as we know it. All those who care about higher education, academic freedom, and the future of democracy should prepare for the fight ahead by organizing their campus communities.

New analysis identifies areas where the Department of Education’s final Title IX regulations advance equity goals and where they fall short.

AAUP in the News

Mon, 08/26/2024  |  Financial Times

“We are seeing multiple schools adopting new restrictions on speech without respecting governance procedures. They will discourage protests, have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and threaten harsh sanctions without due process.”

Fri, 08/23/2024  |  Chronicle of Higher Education

As Nelson Mandela told the African National Congress: “In some cases … it might be correct to boycott, and in others it might be unwise and dangerous. In still other cases another weapon of political struggle might be preferred. A demonstration, a protest march, a strike, or civil disobedience might be resorted to, all depending on the actual conditions at the given time.”

Both the 2006 report and the 2024 statement cite that quotation approvingly. Cary Nelson nonetheless thinks otherwise. Between the two Nelsons, the AAUP sides with Mandela.

Mon, 08/19/2024  |  Chronicle of Higher Education

It is Nelson, not the AAUP, who has politicized the question of academic freedom by objecting to its extension to faculty and students who, for principled reasons, might support academic boycotts in the name of those systematically denied it. Careful, thoughtful AAUP policy is still “the gold standard for academic freedom.” The alternative Cary Nelson offers — a selective principle, an exclusionary practice, driven by a hardline Zionism — is a corruption of that enduring standard.

Fri, 08/16/2024  |  Inside Higher Ed

“By suppressing academic freedom and the free speech rights of students and faculty and inviting punitive discipline and a brutal police crackdown on student protests at Columbia, Shafik failed to protect basic tenets of higher education and capitulated to a new McCarthyist witch hunt against the Academy,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson said Thursday. “This is her legacy.”

Upcoming Events

October 25, 2024 to October 26, 2024

A meeting of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

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