As we head into August, we have election results, new research, and a chance to take action on behalf of the members at Akron-AAUP. More below.

Officer and Council Election Results
In a mail ballot election, AAUP chapter and section delegates elected Irene Mulvey of Fairfield University as the new president of the 105-year-old faculty-led organization. Paul Davis of Cincinnati State Technical and Community College was elected as vice president, and Christopher Sinclair of the University of Oregon was elected as secretary-treasurer. Chapter and section delegates also elected Nivedita Majumdar and Glinda Rawls as at-large Council members.
Watch the 2020 AAUP officer and Council candidate campaign speeches here.

Report on Prevalence of AAUP Policies 
The AAUP released a new research report, Policies on Academic Freedom, Dismissal for Cause, Financial Exigency, and Program Discontinuance, that examines the prevalence of AAUP-supported policies in faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at four-year institutions that have a tenure system. The report can be found here: https://www.aaup.org/news/report-prevalence-aaup-policies.

Database Transition 
The AAUP is launching a series of upgrades to our online systems between Friday, July 31, and Monday, August 3. During this time, you will be unable to log in to your account to access member-only content on our website (all other content will be available). Notices about the changeover will also be posted on our website.
The changes are happening because the AAUP is moving to a new member database. All members will receive an email tomorrow about the changeover and another email Monday, August 3, with log-in credentials. At a later date our membership department will be in touch with chapter leaders to discuss how you will interact with our newly updated database system. Stay tuned.

Stand with Akron-AAUP 
The Akron-AAUP needs our help. On July 15, the University of Akron Board of Trustees, at the recommendation of President Gary Miller, terminated 97 full-time faculty positions, 96 of which were part of the Akron-AAUP bargaining unit, and 70 of which were tenured professors. The chapter has launched a letter-writing campaign to the trustees and president telling them to rescind the decision or resign their positions. 
The administration reopened the collective bargaining agreement with the faculty union by invoking the "force majeure" section of the contract. Akron-AAUP has contested the use of force majeure. They also have presented the administration with various alternatives to eliminating these positions, such as reductions in administrative salaries and reforming athletics expenditures. However, the administration rejected such proposals outright.
Send a letter here.

Summer Institute Online 
Our Summer Institute Online webinar series began on July 7 and will continue through August 4, with at least two webinars each week. The 90-minute sessions covered a wide range of topics, from fighting efforts to sideline faculty governance to supporting student protests to pushing back against austerity budgets. There were also two opportunities for attendees to share the challenges they’ve faced and the successes they’ve had in shared governance and organizing in small-group discussions.
The closing plenary on August 4 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm EDT, “Rebuilding Higher Education as a Common Good,” will discuss a vision of various paths forward for higher education: “The COVID-19 pandemic, the looming depression, and the national uprising against systemic racism have shown us that reform in higher education is needed now more than ever. How can we rebuild higher education around the pillars of equity, affordability, and quality? How can we better realize the role of our system of higher education in sustaining democratic society?”
The panelists are: 

• Momin Rahman, Cochair of the Equity Committee for the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
• Christopher Newfield, University of California, Santa Barbara faculty and author of The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them
• Annelise Orleck, Copresident of Dartmouth College AAUP
• Todd Wolfson, President of Rutgers University AAUP-AFT
• Moderator: Julie Schmid, Executive Director of the AAUP

Click here to sign up.

AAUP Opposes Exclusion of International Students
The AAUP issued a statement on July 13 about the Department of Homeland Security’s July 6 ruling regarding international students and the upcoming academic year. The statement called on the Trump administration “to allow all international students to obtain or retain visas to continue their education at US institutions, regardless of whether they participate remotely, in person, or through a hybrid model and regardless of whether they are studying inside or outside the United States, during this unprecedented global health crisis.” 
On July 13, the AAUP joined an amicus brief in support of a legal challenge filed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to prevent DHS’s July 6 directive, which rescinds a prior COVID-19 exemption for international students participating in online education, from taking effect so that thousands of international students can continue to participate in educational opportunities in the United States, even if their course of study is online. Even though DHS agreed to withdraw their July 6 directive, ICE has now issued guidance excluding new international students from entering the US to participate in remote learning at US institutions. AAUP joined 45 other higher education associations, and signed on to a letter last week to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf seeking assurances that all students with a valid visa will be allowed to enter the country in time for the fall semester.

AAUP Signs on to Rulemaking Petitions 
The AAUP signed onto two petitions to renew as part of the US Copyright Office rulemaking, the process of renewing and/or seeking modification to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The first, a petition by the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic, University of California, Irvine School of Law seeks renewal of the expanded exemption for multimedia e-books which would permit authors of multimedia e-books to circumvent the Content Scramble System on DVDs, the Advanced Access Content System on Blu-ray discs, and encryption and authentication protocols on digitally transmitted video in order to make fair use of motion picture content in multimedia e-books, not just for film criticism.
The second, a petition by the American University Washington College of Law, on behalf of Peter Decherney, professor of cinema studies and English at the University of Pennsylvania, et al. seeks renewal of the exemption for audiovisual works (including excerpts from motion pictures, television programs, music videos, and video games) embodied in physical media (such as DVDs protected by the Content Scramble System) and Blu-ray Discs (protected by the Advanced Access Content System) or TPM-protected online distribution services or streaming media, where the circumvention is accomplished by college and university students or faculty (including teaching and research assistants) for the purpose of criticism or comment.

https://academeblog.org/2020/07/23/anti-faculty-coup-at-national-university
BY ALARMED FACULTY MEMBERS AT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

This spring and summer of COVID has witnessed a perhaps unprecedented assault on faculty rights, as institution after institution, claiming some sort of exigency, have laid off both contingent and tenured faculty members, restructured programs, and short-circuited established institutions of shared governance.  In many cases the challenges are indeed extraordinary.  But, as the AAUP has noted, “too often administrations invoke broader fiscal collapse as a justification for implementing, without meaningful faculty participation in the decision-making process, a variety of measures that undermine the mission of the institution and threaten the working conditions of faculty, academic professionals, graduate employees, and other campus staff.”  One of the most alarming such cases is at National University in San Diego, California.  There, in a breathtaking series of moves, the administration and board have almost overnight not only reversed years of shared governance experience, but virtually eviscerated the faculty’s power over the curriculum and eroded, if not destroyed, its academic freedom.  National University is not claiming any negative financial impact from the COVID crisis but is nevertheless using the emergency situation created by the crisis to institute the sweeping changes outlined below.  This report from faculty activists at National University is posted anonymously out of fear of retaliation.  

In October 2019, National University (NU) announced that it received a gift of $350 million from T. Denny Sanford. These funds, the University’s administration declared in an article published by the Associated Press, would help the university to better fulfill its mission of expanding access to higher education for adult learners. In February 2020, the University received a 10-year reaccreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, though with warnings about the nature of its governing board structures and its approach to “change management.”

Nevertheless, in the following months, the University has undertaken a series of sudden unilateral moves to cut staff, faculty, and programs; cancel all full-time faculty contracts; and dismantle all existing shared governance structures. The stated justifications for these moves have included a need for greater “nimbleness” in responding to a changing higher education landscape, a need for more efficiency, a desire to reduce tuition costs for students, and (of course) the COVID-19 crisis. It is important to point out that throughout its 50-year history NU has been an extraordinarily “nimble” institution. It has responded to changing conditions by targeting the needs of a diverse adult population offering one course at a time, adopting distance learning in the late 1990s, updating delivery modes with each generation of new technology, innovating in andragogy [the method and practice of teaching adult learners], synchronous and asynchronous delivery, virtual labs, systematic assessment of learning outcomes, building outstanding digital library services, and integrating a dedicated team of part-time faculty. All this was accomplished through a fertile partnership between a full-time and part-time faculty and administration and staff, rendering the excuses for current moves given by administration spurious.
In March, the Chancellor of the National University System, an affiliation of the flagship non-profit National University and several recently-acquired non-traditional institutions, announced that a number of university functions, including student enrollment, information technology, marketing, and the library, would be consolidated with other affiliates. Most of these would be outsourced to National Education Partners, a for-profit entity now-owned by the National University System and run by a former member of the National University Board of Trustees (the University’s Board and the System Board are essentially identical). No faculty were consulted or informed ahead of time of these plans.

Beginning in April, the University also accelerated the cancellation of roughly a third of its academic programs, using a process that bypassed the review and approval processes established in the Faculty- and Board-approved Faculty Policies. Cancellation of a program was one of the grounds under the Faculty Policies for terminating faculty positions, as was faculty “fit” with a reorganized University.

In a series of letters sent to faculty in May, National University President David Andrews announced an imminent “rightsizing” of the full-time faculty (the full-time student to faculty ratio already numbered in the several hundred to one prior to this change). No data was given to define rightsizing. He also announced the cancellation of all existing faculty contracts. Faculty at National University worked without tenure but, in amendments to the Faculty Policies, they had secured long-term contracts of up to ten years based on rank and a reappointment system that operated on a shared governance model. After dozens of faculty took early retirement offers following announcements of these upcoming changes, over 40 additional full-time faculty were summarily terminated without following the criteria or procedures outlined in the Faculty Policies. The effect was a roughly 20% reduction in full time faculty positions. One department alone has lost ten of its thirty-two full time faculty over two years while enrollments are growing significantly.

On May 22, the President announced that all remaining faculty contracts, along with the Faculty Policies and the Faculty Senate, would cease to be honored by the administration as of July 1, when new contracts would come into effect. On June 15, an “Interim Faculty Handbook” was issued. It contained no terms of appointment; no processes for reappointment, promotion or raises; no standards of performance; no mention of academic freedom. It contained no provision for elected faculty governance bodies, including the Faculty Senate and Graduate and Undergraduate Councils, which had overseen faculty work and welfare and curriculum at NU for over twenty-five years. Instead, the Handbook created a University Senate made up of five top administrators and five faculty appointed by the administration to operate as a new shared governance body. A similarly appointed Academic Affairs Committee would oversee the drafting of a permanent Faculty Handbook and become the university-wide curriculum committee, replacing the faculty-elected Graduate and Undergraduate Councils. What it did contain is alarming. In one section it seeks to define a new job description for university professor, relegating the historical role of scholar/teacher to that of providing content and delegating course design and teaching approach to centralized instructional designers not qualified in the field. The document states,
Academic programs will be jointly administered by a program director (full time faculty member) and an andragogy lead (staff or faculty member with appropriate expertise in andragogy, instructional design, and student support). The Program Lead and Subject Matter Experts (full-time faculty) will have authority over program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and student learning outcomes. Subject Matter Experts will have the responsibility for assuring program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and student learning outcomes are aligned with workforce relevance. Andragogy leads and instructional experts will oversee the design of learning experiences and instructional delivery. The instructor of record for each course will be assigned after the course design and delivery mechanisms have been established.

President Andrews has repeatedly assured the University community that the institution is in sound financial health, and this is undoubtedly true. Even prior to the Sanford gift, the University held over $650 million dollars in reserves (until recently called a “quasi-endowment”) and had total assets of over $1 billion. This financial strength has been taken advantage of by the System: in 2018, the System used the National University reserves as collateral to purchase the for-profit Northcentral University, most of which it converted to a non-profit entity and part of which it converted to the for-profit National Education Partners. In April, National University also received $2.28 million in CARES Act stimulus funds.

While many universities in the U.S. may suffer a decline in enrollments in the upcoming months, this was never a likely scenario at National University. Over 70% of NU courses were held online before the onset of the coronavirus—in-person classes being held in the month of March across California were transitioned to the online format with only administrative adjustments, without a need for redesign or new trainings. In his April communication, the President noted, “We were very fortunate to have extensive experience in distributed work and online learning…. Early indicators suggest we are successfully continuing our core functions with little disruption to students. Students are applying and enrolling, taking courses, and making progress toward degrees and credentials.” In a video message to the faculty on July 10, 2020, the President said, “we are financially strong.” Because it offers classes on a flexible schedule at a reasonable price, NU has historically seen enrollment growth in periods of economic decline. Enrollments at NU are up 20-30% year-over-year. Yet, instead of continuing in a prosperous direction that provided programmatic options and faculty-driven curriculum, the University has moved to a for-profit and precision learning model, while terminating dozens of faculty, rewriting the contracts of those who remain, and abolishing a long-established system of shared governance.

Faculty have been taken by surprise by these attacks. But we have responded and organized. The Faculty Senate, in one of its final actions of the academic year, voted to send a complaint to the regional accreditor, WSCUC. The Faculty Senate conducted new elections and has refused to dissolve as an advisory body that represents the faculty voice at NU. Membership of the NU AAUP advocacy chapter has grown so rapidly that the chapter’s letter to the President garnered a defensive response from the administration that was sent to all faculty.

We believe the actions taken at NU are dangerous on two levels. At the organizational level there are already indications that the changes proposed have created a highly toxic level of uncertainty and demoralization. The institution is already in chaos as contradictions, bad decision, confusion and anxiety mount. Top-down decisions that violate long-established principles of good academic practice undermine the capacity of the institution to serve its students and employees. These moves should be resisted to avoid more systemic damage on a global societal level. The changes being attempted at NU are aimed at redefining the role of the university and deconstructing the professional role of scholars and other knowledge creators. It delegitimizes academic culture which seeks new knowledge and the advancement of society and the public welfare and promotes a commercial culture model aimed at mass production of trained workers as cheaply and profitably as possible. Though NU has until now combined both goals, holding as a core value that opportunities for personal development should not be limited to those who can afford more elite schools, recent and planned moves by administration with no input from faculty at more than window-dressing level make it clear that the academic values held by a committed professional faculty are no longer central to its mission.

We wanted to make public this faculty protest of the actions of the administration and Board of Trustees. Given the recent mass layoffs at NU, the abrogation of our previous long-term, and the lack of a tenure system, we are
​
Alarmed Faculty Members at NU (names not provided out of fear of retaliation)

Last week, the higher education community reeled from the shock of a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ruling that bars international students from being in the United States if they are enrolled in institutions that will only offer online instruction this fall. This news came at a time when many colleges and universities had already made announcements about the new academic year, which meant that plans for remote learning made with public health in mind would have the unintended effect of excluding international students.

Yesterday, the AAUP released a statement about the ruling. It begins,
The Department of Homeland Security’s July 6 ruling regarding international students and the upcoming 2020–21 academic year is but the latest example of the Trump administration’s callous cruelty, especially toward immigrants and those it deems “other.” The American Association of University Professors thus joins many other higher education organizations and colleagues in the labor movement in calling on the administration to allow all international students to obtain or retain visas to continue their education at US institutions, regardless of whether they participate remotely, in person, or through a hybrid model and regardless of whether they are studying inside or outside the United States, during this unprecedented global health crisis.Read the full statement.

The AAUP also joined over seventy other higher education organizations yesterday in submitting an amicus brief, prepared by the American Council on Education (ACE), in support of a legal challenge filed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against the DHS in the US District Court in Massachusetts. The challenge seeks to prevent the DHS directive from taking effect so that thousands of international students can continue to participate in educational opportunities in the United States, even if their course of study is online. The amicus brief notes that “with the stroke of a pen, the global standing of our nation and its preeminent higher educational system will needlessly suffer again from exclusionary policies that—contrary to long-held national values of openness and interconnection—single out international students and arbitrarily threaten their eligibility to collaborate, learn, and share their many talents at American colleges and universities.” You can find the amicus brief and a summary here.

On Friday the AAUP, along with dozens of other higher education organizations, signed on to a letter from ACE president Ted Mitchell to Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The letter states, “We urge the administration to rethink its position and offer international students and institutions the flexibility necessary to safely navigate resuming their educational activities in the midst of this crisis in ways that take into account the health and safety of our students and staff in the upcoming academic year.” Read the full letter.

The national AAUP will continue to work with other higher education organizations, our organizing partner AFT, and our chapters and state conferences to ensure that campuses can move forward in the fall with reopening plans that are safe for and inclusive of all members of the higher education community.

If you're not already a member, you can support work like this by joining the AAUP today.

In solidarity,
Julie Schmid
Executive Director
P.S. On Friday we also released early an article from the upcoming Journal of Academic Freedom with a pertinent analysis of how US immigration laws influence campus and impose enforcement roles on colleges and universities. Read Abigail Boggs’s “On Borders and Academic Freedom: Noncitizen Students and the Limits of Rights.”

This week marked the kickoff of our Summer Institute Online, with webinars focusing on issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you join! Read on for more on SI Online, our new statement on shared governance during times of crisis, and how you can take action now to urge Congress to fund aid to states and higher education.

Summer Institute Online
The AAUP Summer Institute Online is now underway. Join hundreds of AAUP members from around the country in our special series of training webinars focused specifically on the challenges facing higher education today. Running through August 4, the virtual summer institute features two webinars each week. Our 90-minute sessions will cover a wide range of topics, from campus decisions about reopening to supporting student protests to pushing back against austerity budgets. In addition, hour-long breakout sessions after the governance and organizing webinars will provide a special opportunity for smaller groups of attendees to brainstorm about how to apply the guidance to their chapter’s circumstances. There is also a special plenary panel that will highlight the experiences of frontline health-care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can view the complete schedule and register for these webinars today.

Principles of Academic Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The AAUP Committee on College and University Governance has released a new statement affirming the principles of academic governance in the face of growing concern over unilateral actions taken by governing boards and administrations during the pandemic. “During this challenging time,” the statement reads, “the committee calls upon administrations and governing boards, in demonstrated commitment to principles of shared governance, to maintain transparency, engage in ‘joint effort,’ and honor the faculty’s decision-making responsibility for academic and faculty personnel matters as the most effective means of weathering the current crisis.”
You can read the full statement here.

Send a Letter to Your Member of Congress
Many of our states and communities continue to face mounting and very serious financial shortfalls as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability of states to provide adequate funding for higher education and other public goods will be dependent upon the inclusion of relief for state and local governments in the next federal stimulus package. If you haven't already, you can to write to your US congressional representative and your senators and urge them to include relief for state and local governments in the next stimulus package. Here’s the link to send a letter now.

We’ll be in touch with another COVID-19 update in August. Stay strong, stay safe.

In solidarity,
Julie Schmid
Executive Director, AAUP