On the verge of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the American Association of University Professors, we examine the organization’s focus on academic freedom, shared governance, and the challenges the AAUP faced during its early years. The history is a fairly uncontested one: higher education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States was the context for the struggle over academic freedom and shared governance. Dismissed professors, resignations by colleagues, and the struggle of (...) professionalization characterize the period.1 A century later, we wonder about the state of academic freedom and shared governance. We argue that higher education is currently so.. (shrink)

The review argues that, while Fish's book is undoubtedly a corrective to the most extreme examples of polemical teaching, it oversimplifies the difficulties academics face in trying to create sharp distinctions between politics and scholarship. The radical disconnection he advocates does not address the most difficult situations in which lines cannot be clearly drawn between the substance of academic research and teaching and the politics of the process of knowledge production itself.

The AAUP faculty union, established in 1973 on the University of Bridgeport campus, followed a policy of maximum militancy. Typically, this strategy was met by an ad hoc and often poorly informed administrative response, and ended in the bitter two-year faculty strike of 1990–1992. The absence of a coherent union relations strategy on the administration's part and a pattern of militant confrontation wherein the union almost always prevailed virtually guaranteed such an outcome.

The president of the AAUP faculty union at University of Bridgeport, from 1987 to 1991, offers a first-hand account of the circumstances leading to the fatal strike there. He refutes accusations that the union and its leadership destroyed the university and provides a dramatic, personal account of a faculty union under attack by union busters. The faculty, he argues, was resisting a concerted onslaught on traditional faculty rights. It fought desperately to stifle a retrograde revolution in higher education seeking (...) the substitution of absolute Management Rights to traditional collegiality. He refers to faculty as the soul and mind of a university, and to administration as a necessary evil whose duty is primarily to assist the faculty in the accomplishment of the university's mission. (shrink)

Discussions of college faculty professionalism most often address the ethical responsibilities or failures of "professors." Yet the majority of college faculty are not "professors," and work in conditions that preclude or prevent acting in accordance with high-minded statements like the AAUP's Statement on Professional Ethics, In addition, ignorance of the actual working conditions of both tenure-track and tenuous-track faculty has induced a crisis of ethical responsibility for all college faculty. Because official statements about college faculty professionalism neglect the reality (...) of college faculty work, the ethical responsibility of faculty requires a new basis. (shrink)

With reference to the “Campus Wars” debates, this paper argues that within the classroom, professional responsibilities justify professors advocating for personal commitments which are pertinent to their discipline. In fact, given a professor’s commitment to pursuing truth in the classroom, this advocacy is both inevitable and desirable. The question to ask, then, is what separates appropriate from inappropriate forms of influence on students. The author draws on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP’s) Statement of Professional Ethics to explore (...) ethical tensions that professors face in the classroom and to motivate further discussion about these tensions as they pertain specifically to ethics teachers. After arguing that the chief tension an ethics professor must navigate is that which arises between the pursuit of truth and respect for student autonomy, the author moves to a consideration of various pedagogical strategies (drawn from the AAUP and from the author’s own experience) for negotiating this tension. Though each strategy discussed holds advantages and disadvantages, the author maintains that the question of appropriate advocacy is important and complex, and that it calls for further study. (shrink)

With reference to the “Campus Wars” debates, this paper argues that within the classroom, professional responsibilities justify professors advocating for personal commitments which are pertinent to their discipline. In fact, given a professor’s commitment to pursuing truth in the classroom, this advocacy is both inevitable and desirable. The question to ask, then, is what separates appropriate from inappropriate forms of influence on students. The author draws on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP’s) Statement of Professional Ethics to explore (...) ethical tensions that professors face in the classroom and to motivate further discussion about these tensions as they pertain specifically to ethics teachers. After arguing that the chief tension an ethics professor must navigate is that which arises between the pursuit of truth and respect for student autonomy, the author moves to a consideration of various pedagogical strategies (drawn from the AAUP and from the author’s own experience) for negotiating this tension. Though each strategy discussed holds advantages and disadvantages, the author maintains that the question of appropriate advocacy is important and complex, and that it calls for further study. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of the University of Bridgeport's Faculty Council in relation to the faculty union. The Faculty Council is a governing body composed of elected faculty representatives from different schools and departments within the university. Faculty Council leaders facilitated the certification of AAUP as the faculty's bargaining agent in 1973 and, under the author's leadership, the faculty petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union in 1991. The author participated on the picket line during (...) the 1975, 1978 and 1987 faculty strikes, but crossed the picket line during the 1990 strike. (shrink)

Universities and colleges all over the United States are currently revising and implementing policies concerning sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, under the generally expressed concern to comply with Title IX requirements. But there is a very basic problem of equivocation. Both “sexual harassment” and “sexual misconduct” are used in very different ways in different contexts, often by the same entity. The result is a mess in which members of campus communities cannot be sure of their obligations or protections, and which (...) presents a serious threat to academic freedom. (shrink)