Sunday, June 19, 2016

Rearguard Actions--AAUP Censures Missouri (Columbia) and Takes Other Action at its Annual Meeting






On June 18, 2016 the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) took a number of actions relating to conduct by university officials. Among the most important, the AAUP voted to censure the University of Missouri (Columbia) and St Rose University of NY for violation standards of academic freedom and tenure.

This from its Press Release:
Censure and Sanction Actions

Washington, DC—Today, delegates to the 102nd Annual Meeting of the AAUP voted to place the College of Saint Rose in New York and the University of Missouri (Columbia) on the AAUP’s list of administrations censured for violating standards of academic freedom and tenure. The annual meeting also voted to remove from the censure list two institutions that had taken the necessary steps to address the AAUP’s outstanding concerns: Metropolitan Community College in Missouri and Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Grove City College had been on the censure list since 1963, longer than any other institution. However, the annual meeting did not approve a conditional removal of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from its censure list.
I have written about the action against the University of Missouri (here) and the University of Illinois (here). The actions evidence the scope of the battleground that defines emerging relationships between university administration--increasingly bureaucratic, self referencing and remote from its faculty--and faculty, increasingly de-professionalized and torn between global movements in disciplinary interests and the market oriented programming of universities and their outside stakeholders. Where once the object was to flesh out and broaden the space within which the professional competence of faculty was recognized and the self regulation of faculty through their own communities of scholars in their fields was understood as the primary instrument of discipline, now the focus increasingly is on building walls to protect faculties who are no longer viewed as the superior authority with respect to the knowledge they produce or the structuring of its dissemination.  Administrators have sought to transfer authority for both knowledge production and the structure of its dissemination (coursers and majors) from disciplinary communities of scholars to markets for knowledge consumption (labor markets and the institutions that seek to develop and exploit knowledge and to make use of the students produced for consumption within labor markets). Though the language of university administration and the AAUP remains locked in that of the normative structures of the 1980s, the world in which these contests are undertaken have changed (e.g., here and here).

The Press Release follows along with links to the original investigating committee reports.


Censure and Sanction Actions

Washington, DC—Today, delegates to the 102nd Annual Meeting of the AAUP voted to place the College of Saint Rose in New York and the University of Missouri (Columbia) on the AAUP’s list of administrations censured for violating standards of academic freedom and tenure. The annual meeting also voted to remove from the censure list two institutions that had taken the necessary steps to address the AAUP’s outstanding concerns: Metropolitan Community College in Missouri and Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Grove City College had been on the censure list since 1963, longer than any other institution. However, the annual meeting did not approve a conditional removal of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from its censure list.

Censure by the AAUP informs the academic community that the administration of an institution has violated generally recognized principles and standards of academic freedom and tenure. The full list of censured administrations is available here. Full recommendations by the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to the annual meeting, as well as the original investigating committee reports, can be found here.

Delegates to the meeting voted to add Union County College in New Jersey and the University of Iowa to its list of institutions sanctioned for violating AAUP-supported standards of academic government. Delegates also voted to remove Lindenwood University in Missouri from the list. Sanction by the AAUP informs the academic community of infringements of generally accepted governance standards after investigations reveal serious departures by the administration and/or governing board from those standards. More information on sanctioned institutions is here. Full recommendations by the Committee on College and University Governance to the annual meeting, as well as the original investigating committee reports, can be found here.

Newly Censured Institutions

The College of Saint Rose (New York)
University of Missouri (Columbia)
Censure Removals

Grove City College (Pennsylvania)
Metropolitan Community College (Missouri)
Newly Sanctioned Institutions

Union County College (New Jersey)
University of Iowa
Sanction Removals

Lindenwood University (Missouri)
Contacts:

For more information on specific cases:

Contact Greg Scholtz (gscholtz@aaup.org / 202-594-3624) regarding the College of Saint Rose, Grove City College, and Union County College.

Contact Hans-Joerg Tiede (jtiede@aaup.org / 202-594-3646) regarding the University of Missouri (Columbia), Metropolitan Community College, University of Iowa, and Lindenwood University.

Contact Anita Levy (alevy@aaup.org / 202-594-3653) regarding the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

__________

Censure & Sanction Statements

Imposition of Censure

The College of Saint Rose (NY)
Recommendation of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Investigative Report: Academic Freedom and Tenure: College of Saint Rose

University of Missouri (Columbia)
Recommendation of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Investigative Report: Academic Freedom and Tenure: University of Missouri

Removal of Censure

Grove City College (PA)
Recommendation of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Investigative Report: Academic Freedom and Tenure: Grove City College

Metropolitan Community College (MO)
Recommendation of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Investigative Report: Academic Freedom and Tenure: Metropolitan Community College

Conditional Removal of Censure

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recommendation of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Investigative Report: Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Imposition of Sanction

Union County College (NJ)
Recommendation of the Committee on College and University Governance
Investigative Report: College and University Governance: Union County College

University of Iowa
Recommendation of the Committee on College and University Governance
Investigative Report: College and University Governance: University of Iowa
Removal of Sanction

Lindenwood University (MO)
Recommendation of the Committee on College and University Governance
Investigative Report: College and University Government: Lindenwood College

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