The AAUP "Redbook"
Welcome: AAUP at the University of Akron
"It is, then, a prerequisite to a realization of the proper measure of academic freedom in American institutions of learning, that all boards of trustees should understand...the full implications of the distinction between private proprietorship and a public trust."
From the AAUP's 1915 "Declaration of Principles"
ContRact Negotiations: Compensation
"I also have asked our Board of Trustees to support measures that will allow us to offer a pay increase for all employees next year (2010-2011), and I have asked our chief financial officer to begin planning an institutional budget that is built around an increase to base salaries. Of course, there is much more that we must do."
--Luis Proenza, President, The University of Akron
December 16, 2009
University of Minnesota: A faculty member addresses the BOT on "the Financial crisis."
the BP oil spill and Academic Freedom
From Inside Higher Ed online, July 22, 2010
"The oil spill is not only a catastrophic economic and environmental disaster for the Gulf region; it also has major implications for energy policy in both the United States and the rest of the world. The ability to share research results promptly and freely is not only a basic tenet of academic freedom; in this case, it is also critical to the health of the region and the world. While more investigative work is needed, the very prospect of an interested corporation worth billions of dollars blocking the free exchange of university research and controlling the work scientists choose to do is deeply disturbing. If knowledgeable scientists cannot testify in court, the ability of injured parties to win just compensation is also jeopardized. But the long-term threat to American society is still more grave: we need independent faculty voices, perhaps more so now — in a knowledge-based society — than ever before."
Read the entire article here.
"It is evident that
any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the
dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national
judgment and action."
- Albert Einstein, Member of AAUP
"...truth is more likely to emerge through the interplay
and conflict of ideas resulting from the exercise of individual reason
than through the imposition of uniform and standardized opinion by
authority."
A.O. Lovejoy, Co-founder AAUP
"To investigate truth; critically verify fact; to reach conclusions by means of the best methods at command, untrammeled by external fear or favor, to communicate this truth to the student: this is precisely the aim and object of the university. To aim a blow at any one of these operations is to deal a vital wound to the university itself"
John Dewey, Co-founder AAUP