Founded in 1915, the American Association of University Professors has helped to shape higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities.
The mission of the American Association of University Professors is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post‐doctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.
AAUP membership is open to all faculty. Membership fees begin at $5.58 monthly. Your membership fees support the AAUP mission. Visit https://www.aaup.org/membership for more information.
The Clemson Chapter of the AAUP is a part of AAUP-SOUTH CAROLINA.
Other SC chapters are found at Claflin University, Coastal Carolina University, College of Charleston, Columbia College, Francis Marion University, Furman University, SC State University, University of South Carolina-Columbia, USC-Aiken, USC-Beaufort, USC-Upstate, and Winthrop University.
What we’re asking.
These are some of the topics of concern for our local chapter, and some of the questions that we are asking.
COVID and Classroom Safety.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how university administrators regard instructional faculty. As much as a public health crisis, the pandemic has been a test of leadership qualities, including integrity, honesty, and decency. Further, it has been a test of the university’s basic mission in our society. Are university leaders genuinely following the latest science or inventing an approach driven by dollars and convenience? How does the university represent its roles in knowledge creation and dissemination, public responsibility, and moral leadership? Have university leaders been honest with students? If university leaders had to spend many hours each week in lecture halls with 200 or more persons, would they like the policies and protocols that they have created? Does the overall approach appear to be a gamble with people’s lives?
Adjunctification.
This ungainly neologism refers to the replacement of permanent faculty with contingent employees. Over time, as the proportion of contingent faculty grows relative to permanent faculty, tenure and the forms of academic freedom that come with it are effectively phased out. Are university administrators transparent about the processes and data related to faculty lines? How will they preserve tenure and academic freedom for generations to come? Meanwhile, as the proportion of tenured faculty has declined, how will the service workload be distributed?
Freedom of Speech.
Academic freedom is an area of freedom of thought and of speech. More than a hundred years ago, the AAUP was founded in large part to protect faculty thought and speech from political attacks. Although the targets change, these attacks continue to this day. One day it will be evolution; another day it will be climate science. Right now, Critical Race Theory is the target of many attacks. Tomorrow it will be something else. Since the time Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens, tyrants and totalitarians have sought to silence and suppress ideas at odds with their interests and powers. Professors and universities are always the targets of attack in failing democracies. Where do your university leaders stand?
Student Debt
While previous generations benefitted from the public subsidization of university costs, today’s students are saddled with unprecedented levels of debt. Is it a coincidence that tuition subsidies were greatest when access to higher education was closed to women and people of color through gender and racial discrimination? Regardless of the reasons, in the past decades public funding for public universities has declined to the point where calling these institutions “public” is almost laughable. Yet the consequences of this neglect are very serious for students, faculty, institutions, and our society, with students now entering the workforce with many years, even decades, of debt to be paid off. As compared to older generations at the same place in their lives, it will take today’s students much longer to create wealth for themselves and their communities. So what is the university doing about this? Are university leaders fighting for the future of the institution? Are they fighting for students?
Faculty Governance.
As academic administration has become its own career path, the gap between faculty and administrators has grown. Administrators are increasingly out of touch with the work and activities of teaching. Moreover, due to the nature of their career trajectories, administrators frequently come and go, and consequently their decision-making processes are often focused on the short-term rather than the long-term good of the university. Ultimately, they are often making decisions with consequences that they will not have to live with. More than ever we must therefore ask whether faculty have a role in shaping all aspects of the academic enterprise. Is the Faculty Senate doing its job in representing faculty interests? Are administrators making good decisions for the long-term?
Lecturers’ Rights.
Over the past few decades, the number of titles for contingent faculty has proliferated. As compared to real benefits, titles are cheap. And whether named lecturers, adjuncts, part-time faculty, clinical faculty, “special” faculty, or the many other titles used for instructors without tenure, this growing proportion of the faculty-at-large is often excluded from decision-making committees and faculty senates, and generally lacks representation in academic affairs. Do lecturers and other contingent faculty have a real voice in the Faculty Senate or other forms of shared governance? Do they have any voice at all? How can the chapter help them? How can they organize?
Our K12 Colleagues.
Although university faculty may often feel pleasantly isolated in their Ivory Towers, the reality is that their status and privileges are under assault, whether they know it or not. Today the real status of many university faculty is much closer to that of overworked and underpaid K12 teachers. The reality is that political attacks on teachers include all educators, and attacks on tenure are designed to put all educators under the thumb of political pressure. We can no longer pretend to be isolated. University faculty must stand with our K12 colleagues and therefore we support such organizations as SC for Ed, The South Carolina Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers.