Our hearts broke this weekend as we watched expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and hatred on the University of Virginia campus result in violence. We are especially saddened by the death of one activist and the wounding of others. Expressions of racism and hatred paired with violent actions are not new in our country. Our history shows that marchers armed with guns and sticks, carrying shields and torches, and chanting Nazi slogans have but one purpose: to strike fear and terror in the hearts of people of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and all who believe in a more inclusive America.
To remain silent in the face of hatred is to be complicit in that hatred. Therefore, we will not remain silent while white supremacists, emboldened by the rhetoric of the Trump administration, perpetrate violence and incite bigotry. After equivocating, the President has finally denounced the KKK, the Nazis, and other white supremacist groups. But he and his administration must do more. We call on the Trump administration to use all of the forces at its disposal to bring to justice those involved in fomenting violence and terror. Further, we call on the President and his administration to denounce all attempts to equate nonviolent protests like Black Lives Matter with violent hate groups.

We decry the violence, the discrimination, and the attempts to intimidate, silence, and harm our students, educators, and community members. We reject racism and white supremacy. We stand with students, educators, their families, and communities across the country working for equitable and welcoming environments where it is safe to exist, learn, and peacefully disagree and debate. We will work with faculty members, students, and college leaders, uniting and organizing with allies and in our communities to resist hate and fight for a just society.

Rudy Fichtenbaum, AAUP president
Henry Reichman, AAUP first vice president

Constant and insidious.

That pretty well describes attacks on the rights of academics to conduct research free from political surveillance and intrusion. The latest salvos come from two reactionary websites, The Daily Caller and The College Fix. Both attacked our work in the courts supporting faculty members who have been subjected to relentless public records requests for e-mails related to their climate research.

An article published on The Daily Caller, a website founded by Tucker Carlson of Fox News, claimed that the AAUP “doesn’t want . . . unpublished climate change research seen by the public.” The College Fix, which is funded in large part by a conservative foundation whose biggest donors are members of the DeVos family, published a piece in a similar vein.

They’re wrong.

Here are the facts: Our legal and advocacy work around this issue involves fighting requests that seek prepublication communications and other unpublished academic research materials, cases where compelled disclosure would have a severe chilling effect on intellectual debate among researchers and scientists. The academic freedom to conduct research is essential to a vital university system and to the common good. The AAUP and its members will continue to fight for those ideals, no matter how constant the attacks.

Those fighting against academic freedom are seeking to divide and conquer. Our goal is to unite and win. Together we can do that.

Donate now to the AAUP Foundation to help support our legal work fighting for academic freedom.

American Association of University Professors

By Marc Joseph
June 24, 2017
I am Marc Joseph, Professor of Philosophy at Mills College. I have been a teacher at Mills for 18 years, and I will continue as a teacher unless you choose, on Monday, to violate the promise of tenure you made in 2005.
I have 180 seconds to explain the value I bring to Mills College – that’s ten seconds per year of service. We’re brought to this absurdity by a process that reduces my deep commitment and knowledge of Mills to three minutes, and I’m angry that I have been disrespected and treated in a manner that has been arbitrary, unethical, and imprudent.
It is arbitrary because the administration has contradicted itself. The Addendum to the Draft FSP (dated June 15, 2017) states that students who need a philosophy class will have to “pursue courses via cross registration,” but at a meeting with students on Monday, June 19, the Provost admitted that Mills itself will have to offer some philosophy courses. First, because 26 students are enrolled in Intro to Philosophy in fall 2017 – contradicting President Hillman’s oft-repeated claim that philosophy does not appeal to our current demographic – and second because, for example, the State of California mandates that our pre-nursing students take either Intro to Philosophy or Ethics. And the Provost keeps mentioning that the global humanities major incorporates philosophy courses.
Who will teach these classes?
Our provost has said that “lots of people can teach philosophy.” I can teach philosophy because I’ve been a scholar in the field for 35 years, and I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University; I read Plato in Greek and Kant in German. Would you send your daughter to a college where the philosophy professor doesn’t have these credentials? Mills needs philosophy classes, and Mills philosophy classes need to be taught by Mills philosophy professors.
The process has been unethical because tenure is a right. As an academic BOT, you promised to protect the integrity of the curriculum and the faculty’s academic freedom, and the integrity of the curriculum and the faculty’s academic freedom are founded upon the expectations built into tenure.
The FEC has given you an alternative path to address the College’s financial challenges; you are ethically obligated to choose that path over this crazy and shameful path of firing tenured professors.
Finally, it is imprudent because the FSP harms the interests of the College. First, if you terminate me and my colleagues, Mills will be formally censured by the American Association of University Professors, and Mills will drop off the list of the 100 best colleges or the 50 best values – because an AAUP censured institution is not a best college or a good value. Professors and administrators in the Peralta system, and professors and administrators at Cal, will not collaborate with Mills, because if Mills breaks tenure, Mills will be a pariah.
Moreover, Cal grad students will not staff our Philosophy courses as adjuncts because teaching at a censured institution will damage their careers; I know this, because the Director of Graduate Studies at the Cal Department of Philosophy has told me that he will direct his students, not staff our courses as scabs. And no other philosopher with standing in the community of scholars will agree to staff our courses as scabs.
Second, it is imprudent because the deliberative process by which faculty and departments were chosen is empirically invalid: dollar values and values to the curriculum were calculated in ways that violate basic principles of statistical reasoning. Do not believe that you are making the brave choice by breaking tenure and terminating me: it is the weak and foolish choice. ”
Marc Joseph, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy

Testimony to Mills College Board of Trustees: Professor of Philosophy Marc Joseph was published on June 24, 2017 in Breaking News, Community, Featured - News, Front Page, Headline Story, Mills in crisis, News

BY HANK REICHMAN
On June 26, the board of trustees of Mills College, meeting behind closed doors, approved a vaguely formulated “Financial Stabilization Plan” (FSP) previously rejected overwhelmingly by the institution’s faculty.  The plan calls for reducing the number of departments from 18 to 13 and the number of schools from four to three.  Two majors — Latin American Studies and Philosophy — are to be eliminated as are four minors, including Physics.

As part of the plan, the board sent layoff notices to five full-time tenured faculty members, effective July 1.  These include full professors of English, History, Philosophy, and Physics and an associate professor of Ethnic Studies.  In June the administration had sent preliminary notices of layoff, pending board action, to eleven faculty members, at least seven of whom (including the five ultimately laid off) hold appointments with tenure.  At least two others, one full-time and one less than full-time, are in the midst of three-year term appointments.  Three of the eleven, including two full professors with tenure, took early retirement; the remaining three were retained, two of whom accepted changes in their teaching assignments.

Located in Oakland, California, Mills is a small liberal arts college for women with graduate programs that are coeducational.  Mills has been distinguished in recent years for its recruitment of students from the surrounding mainly minority community and for its progressive approach to transgender students.  A significant number of Mills students receive financial aid.  A quarter century ago Mills attempted to address an earlier financial crisis by announcing that it would begin admitting male undergraduates, but a rebellion by students and alumni forced the board to abandon that plan in favor of alternate approaches.  In May of this year the Mills board declared a “financial emergency,” claiming that the school’s annual operating deficit has grown to more than $9 million.  At the time the board said that some 30-35 faculty and staff would need to be laid off, but at this writing the number of staff layoffs is not available..

The board’s decision to lay off just five and not eleven faculty members marked a small concession to the Mills faculty, whose AAUP chapter, supported by the AAUP’s national staff and working through campus institutions of shared governance, has been organizing resistance to the Financial Stabilization Plan.  Another hopefully significant concession came with regard to the appeals process open to those laid off.  As AAUP Associate Secretary Hans-Joerg Tiede pointed out in letters to Mills College President Elizabeth Hillman on May 25 and June 13, “the appeal procedures for faculty layoffs in the Mills College faculty handbook fall short of . . . Association-recommended procedural standards by severely restricting the issues that may be raised in such proceeding.”  Moreover, under that policy appeals are heard by the provost, who sends a recommendation to the president, which essentially means that the very administrators who authorized the layoff in the first place are those who adjudicate the appeals.

In response to these criticisms Mills Provost and Dean of the Faculty Chinyere Oparah proposed adding a provision that would afford affected faculty members an opportunity to appeal an adverse recommendation by the provost to an outside arbitrator.  In a June 29 letter to Professor Roger Sparks, chair of the Mills Faculty Executive Committee, Tiede cited the Association’s Arbitration of Faculty Grievances, which states that “’where the faculty does not share in the making of decisions,’ as is currently the case in the applicable section of the Mills College faculty handbook, ‘arbitration may have particular utility.’”

It remains to be seen, however, whether this change will favorably impact the outcome of appeals filed by the five faculty members, who have retained legal counsel.  The process for selecting arbitrators must be neutral and the standards applied must be rigorous.  It should also be clear that the issues subject to arbitration should include the fairness of the criteria by which those laid off were chosen, whether the criteria were rigorously applied, and the financial or other justification for these dismissals.

What is perhaps most striking about the Mills administration’s actions has been its near-total refusal to involve the faculty in planning or to consider faculty opinion.  In a May 31 response to Tiede, President Hillman declared, “We value the advice of these [faculty] committees and have adopted a number of their suggestions.”  But faculty leaders complain that such consultation has been both infrequent and largely meaningless.  The Financial Stabilization Plan adopted on June 26, in addition to being painfully lacking in specifics, outlines major changes in curriculum, staffing, and faculty compensation that were never submitted to the appropriate faculty governance bodies for approval, or even thorough discussion and debate.  Indeed, those bodies pointedly rejected earlier versions of the plan as they leaked out, and the faculty as a whole has voted overwhelmingly to support an alternative proposal developed jointly by the Faculty Executive Committee and members of the AAUP chapter.

As Tiede wrote on June 13,
"The Faculty Executive Committee provided a list of alternatives that it believed would obviate the need to terminate faculty appointments, thus calling into question whether the declaration of financial emergency was demonstrably bona fide.  We are not aware that the administration has provided a
rationale for declining to consider these alternatives to terminating faculty appointments."

If the administration’s concern were indeed strictly with finances these layoffs are hardly an effective response.  As one of the laid-off faculty members calculated, savings from dismissing the five tenured professors will amount only to about $50,000 in the first year, given promised severance packages and costs of hiring adjuncts to teach courses previously taught by those laid off.  More important, the alternate plan from the faculty, which proposes a combination of voluntary retirements and workload reductions along with temporary salary reductions over two years, would in fact be measurably more effective in reducing expenses than the administration’s plan.  The latter, a faculty economist has calculated, would save no more than $4.8 million over five years, while the faculty plan would save about $6.6 million over the same period.

In private meetings with faculty leaders, Mills administrators have all but acknowledged that their plan is more than a response to financial emergency.  It is, they believe, a bold proposal to remake the college’s curriculum, its student body, and its “brand.”  “At the heart” of the plan, they write, are efforts to “bring revenues to a sustainable level within three years” by implementing five reforms.  These are: instituting a “signature undergraduate experience;” building an alliance with the Peralta Community Colleges; expansion of the UC Berkeley Masters in Management and MBA joint program; development of an Executive Education Program; and recruiting efforts of full time athletic coaches.  These proposals are all ill-defined, with minimal guarantees of success.  And the first proposal for a “signature experience” seems to run counter to the plan’s objective commitment to shifting instructional resources from full-time tenured faculty to part-time adjuncts.

Even the selection of the five faculty members now laid off suggests the fuzziness at best of the board’s and its administration’s alleged vision for Mills’ future, pompously entitled “Mills Next.”  In a letter to the administration on May 22, the Mills Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure Committee raised questions about the criteria and evidence used to determine layoff order.  They wrote:
"Layoffs of tenured and tenure track faculty, individuals that have been vetted by the College’s APT committee, raise questions about the status of tenure at Mills.  If tenure, going forward, is to remain on solid footing at Mills, that should be clearly stated in the FSP in both philosophical and concrete terms.  Faculty need to be aware in advance of when and how they will be assessed, and the FSP departs from the College’s promotion and tenure practices."

One faculty member laid off is a nationally recognized poet.  The original list included a world-renowned jazz musician.  But it is perhaps the targeting of the physicist that has most exposed the contempt that Mills administrators have for the college’s liberal arts and science tradition and ultimately for their students.

Here is what one Chemistry/Mathematics major wrote after learning that her physics professor would not likely be teaching again at Mills.
"By eliminating physics while simultaneously reducing the number of faculty qualified to teach physical chemistry, Mills College is telling us female/non-binary science majors that we are not eligible competitors in the boys’ club of the physical sciences. Think about how this in turn affects female/non-binary empowerment both in STEM and in general."

For this reason, Mills College cannot claim that they are focusing on “academic excellence in the arts, sciences, social sciences, humanities, and technology” (MillsNext p.1) because without a department dedicated to an entire branch of science, we cannot demonstrate such academic excellence.

Another student voiced similar sentiments:
"While I truly do not understand why our departments of chemistry and physics — departments so badly in need of support from professors like you to get us into these male dominated fields — were targeted, I still have hope that our college will recognize their mistake.  For one of the leading women’s colleges to turn their back on chemistry and physics is proof of how hard we as women still have to work for equality.  I will continue to advocate for my field."

The layoffs also have about them the odor of retaliation.  All those laid off have been active in faculty governance and, in some cases, the AAUP.  They are vocal and engaged and their removal suggests at least the possibility that the administration’s aim here is as much about decapitating and demoralizing faculty opposition as it is about finances and curriculum.  Already one of those laid off has been barred from campus and closed out of the college’s email system, even before any appeal process has begun."

It is, of course, no accident that Mills has begun to implement this alleged “plan” as summer begins, when the majority of faculty and students are not around to resist.  But AAUP members at Mills and other faculty members are gearing up for a fight this coming fall.  Earlier this year the provost proposed addressing the financial problem by having all faculty members teach an additional course each year, with no increase in salary, of course.  The Faculty Executive Committee rejected the idea, as did a vote by the entire faculty, but the administration unilaterally imposed it anyway.  Now many Mills professors are considering refusing to teach the additional class, since to do so would in effect be to scab on their laid-off colleagues."

The AAUP is proud to stand with our colleagues at Mills and other institutions facing similar assaults on shared governance and faculty rights.
This fight isn’t over.
academeblog.org/2017/07/04/mills-college-lays-off-five-tenured-profesors/

In conjunction with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the AAUP is seeking information from any faculty members who have had their cell phones or other electronic devices searched by US border patrol officers at the nation’s borders while traveling internationally.  The Knight First Amendment Institute is a recently created non-profit organization that works to defend and strengthen freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through litigation, research, and education.  

The AAUP is concerned with the chilling effect such searches may have on academic freedom and with invasion into the privacy of academic work.  We are looking into legal issues related to a US regulation that authorizes border patrol officers to search a traveler’s cell phones and other electronic devices at the borders without any basis for suspecting that the person has done anything wrong. The government enforces this policy against both American citizens and noncitizens, and there has been a sharp uptick in these types of searches over the past year.

We are seeking to learn more about people who have been searched and to explore possible avenues for legal relief. We are interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced anything along the lines of the following while traveling into or out of the United States:

A border patrol officer (or ICE officer) has asked to examine the contents of your phone, tablet, laptop, or any other electronic device, including asking you to unlock your device and/or provide a password to unlock your device;

A border patrol officer (or ICE officer) has examined the contents of your phone or other electronic device, and/or has taken your device outside of your presence for a period of time;

A border patrol officer (or ICE officer) has sought to examine your social media postings on your device, including by asking you for social media passwords and/or user names or handles;

You have reason to believe that a border patrol officer (or ICE officer) made a copy of the contents of your cell phone or other electronic device; or

A border patrol officer (or ICE officer) has kept your cell phone or other electronic device for some period of time and then returned it to you.

We are interested in hearing from both citizens and noncitizens.  Please send an email with a brief description of your experience and your contact information to katie.fallow@knightcolumbia.org. We will keep your information confidential.

The American Association of University Professors

The Trump administration’s proposed budget, released last week, cuts the Department of Education budget by 13.5 percent and reads like a primer on how to destroy higher education and research. The budget guts student-loan forgiveness, subsidized loans, the federal work study program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Fulbright program, to name a few targets.
Back in March we opposed similar cuts proposed in the administration’s “skinny budget,” and we continue to stand strongly against the new budget proposal.

Sign on to an open letter opposing the cuts. We will deliver it to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on June 15, during our annual lobbying day.

Rudy Fichtenbaum
President, AAUP

A report of an AAUP investigation released May 16 concludes that the administration of Spalding University in Kentucky summarily dismissed Erlene Grise-Owens, a long-serving professor of social work, in blatant violation of her academic freedom and normative standards of academic governance and due process.

The report finds that Spalding’s president and provost abruptly terminated Professor Grise-Owens’s tenured appointment because she criticized the administration’s handling of an incident involving a student who brought a gun to a campus parking lot, showed it to a fellow student, and said, “I'm tired of these people f--king with me.” When the student who was shown the gun reported the incident to institutional authorities, the school's chair immediately alerted social work faculty about the incident—except the school’s three faculty members of color, one of whom was scheduled to have the student in class the next day. The student had a history of making racially charged comments in class.

Read the full report here.

Professor Grise-Owens and two of the three faculty members filed formal complaints about the administration’s failure to notify the faculty members of color about the incident. After the administration dismissed their complaint as groundless, they brought it in person to the faculty senate. The same day as their meeting with the senate, Professor Grise-Owens received notice of dismissal at her home by certified mail.

Following the administration’s action, the other two faculty members resigned in protest. One stated, “I cannot be part of such a system, and I will not be part of a system that continuously models disparity between principles and actions and in so doing puts my life and the lives of my students in harm’s way.” The investigating committee found that Professor Grise-Owens was dismissed for “speaking out against institutional policies and practices she deemed inadequate” and, as one faculty member put it, for “being connected to the marginalized voices” of faculty of color.

The AAUP conducts investigations in a few select cases, in which faculty members allege that severe departures from widely accepted academic standards have occurred and persist despite efforts to achieve an appropriate resolution.

Please share the report with your colleagues.

Michael DeCesare
Merrimack College
Chair of the Investigating Committee

Access to free public higher education and strong protections for faculty? That’s a bill we can get behind.

Last month the AAUP endorsed the College for All Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, which would make four-year public college free for families making less than $125,000 and community college free for all. Former students would be able to refinance their student loans with lower interest rates, easing the burden for those who may be struggling. The funding would come from a Wall Street speculation tax. The bill also includes provisions to increase the percentage of faculty jobs that are full-time and on the tenure track, compensate faculty on part-time appointments for work done outside the classroom, and support faculty access to professional development and shared governance.

Next month,  AAUP members will meet with members of Congress as part of Capitol Hill Day during our Annual Conference. We’ll be delivering a letter of support for the College for All Act to members of Congress.

Add your name to the letter now.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/support-the-college-for-all-bill?link_id=1&can_id=6117e4ea23e3cb8599322a9da81ddf68&source=email-sign-on-in-support-of-college-for-all-faculty-protections&email_referrer=sign-on-in-support-of-college-for-all-faculty-protections&email_subject=sign-on-in-support-of-college-for-all-faculty-protections

The College for All Act reaffirms a commitment to quality, public higher education as a right for all Americans. It will help current and former students tackle crippling debt by refinancing loans. Crucially for faculty, it would cut down on the abuse of adjunct labor and strengthen academic freedom protections by increasing the percentage of faculty positions that are on the tenure track.

The AAUP is proud to endorse the bill. Join us and add your name.

Best regards,
Rudy Fichtenbaum
President, AAUP

New Hampshire is still a place where faculty, labor unions, and working people live free.

Last month, two unionized AAUP chapters in New Hampshire worked with other unions, organizations, and community members to defeat a “right-to-work” bill that the governor had promised to sign. Together, we protected the right of faculty and other working people across the state to negotiate collectively.

It was an invigorating fight, making us proud to be members of the AAUP and aligned with all the other organizations that made this a priority.  

So-called right-to-work legislation is designed to weaken unions, undercutting our ability to bargain together for better wages, benefits, and working conditions--which, in the case of faculty, include issues such as academic freedom protections and shared governance rights.

As we faced the prospect of right-to-work in our state, the University of New Hampshire chapters of the AAUP formed a One Faculty committee to fight the legislation. We reached out to faculty across the state, conducted teach-ins, and sent members to open committee hearings and full votes by the legislature. We worked with other unions and community members to ensure that all legislators heard our message loud and clear: working people must be protected and this legislation must be defeated.

We created an “Honor Roll” of Republican legislators who resisted the strong-arm efforts of our new governor and stood up against the legislation. Then we asked members and supporters to call or write to thank both them and the determined Democrats who defied a snowstorm to be in their seats the date of the vote. And it paid off--the bill was defeated in the New Hampshire State House by a bipartisan coalition of legislators, 200 to 177.

Right-to-work isn’t the only legislative threat facing faculty across the country. In Iowa and North Carolina, legislators have introduced bills that would impose an ideological litmus test for new faculty hires. Legislation in Missouri and Iowa seeks to end tenure. All such laws, if enacted, would constrain faculty rights and limit academic freedom.

We must continue to work together united to protect the rights and freedoms of faculty across the country.

I am so heartened by this victory and the incredible solidarity I have seen amongst faculty here.

Onward,
Sarah Hirsch, President
UNH Lecturers United-AAUP

Some reminders about events and resources available to AAUP members:

AAUP Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education
With its thematic focus this year on the rights and freedoms of students, the June 14–18 conference in Washington, DC, honors the fiftieth anniversary of the Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students, issued by the AAUP along with four other groups in 1967. Conference presentation topics include historical and contemporary perspectives on student activism, the impact of digital media on student rights and freedoms, race and diversity on campus, the rights of graduate student workers, and the tension between faculty and student rights.

Friday's luncheon speaker will be Ibram X. Kendi, assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida and winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

Learn more about and register for the conference at https://www.aaup.org/2017-conference. Early-bird registration rates are available until April 15.

Webinar: Academic Freedom in the Age of Trump, February 28
This webinar addresses academic freedom concerns for faculty in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Current threats to academic freedom include the Professor Watchlist website and legislative and gubernatorial attacks on individual faculty members, course offerings, governing boards, the institution of tenure, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities. The webinar will provide an overview of the concept of academic freedom, describe recent attacks on academic freedom, and discuss how you can defend it.

Presenter Hans-Joerg Tiede is a senior program officer in the AAUP's department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance. The webinar is offered free of charge and registration is limited to AAUP members and field staff. Register at https://www.aaup.org/event/webinar-academic-freedom-age-trump.

March 15 Awards Deadline
Consider making a nomination for an AAUP award recognizing individuals or administrators and trustees. The nominations deadline for all awards is March 15. Full guidelines and application procedures appear on the AAUP website at https://www.aaup.org/our-programs/awards.

Career Center
The AAUP has an online career center to help colleges and universities connect with qualified applicants. Whether you are filling a vacancy in your department or seeking a new position, this resource is an easy way to broaden your search. To learn more or create an account, visit https://www.aaup.org/career-center.