Discussion of academic freedom usually focuses on faculty, and it usually refers to speech. That is the gist of the 1915 "General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure," appearing in the inaugural AAUP "Bulletin" as a kind of mission statement. Given the conditions of the American system of higher education--decentralized…

Big or small, established or fledgling, an AAUP chapter on a campus can accomplish a surprising number of things that even the most committed faculty member can't do alone. In this article, the author discusses how an AAUP chapter can transform a campus.

Some are an elegant sentence; some contain many rambling paragraphs. Some have endured unchanged since a college's founding; others have been frequently revised. Some are publicly available in student catalogs and on campus Web sites; others can't be found. But just about every college or university has one: mission statements are declarations of…

Beginning in 1934, representatives of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges (AAC) met and drafted the definitive statement on academic freedom and tenure. Like the U.S. Constitution, the 1940 "Statement on Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure" was a commendable, if deficient, product…

Mission statements are "in" these days. So it was only a matter of time before the authors' own institution was called upon to define itself. What could be easier? The people charged to draft the statement, the faculty, were simply being asked to describe their own doings. The authors discover that with a diverse range of opinions it was not easy…

Like many other colleges and universities, Hofstra University now requires each department to create a "mission statement." Then, on the basis of this statement, a set of more specific curricular goals and objectives have to be created and, finally, a set of quantitative, behavioral criteria by which to assess the department's efforts. This new…

Presents a sheaf of statements from three different professional bodies (American Library Association, American Studies Association, and Journal Editors and Authors Group) in response to current pressures on academic freedom. The sheaf is intended to be informational, but also didactic--each statement is a model of thoughtful negotiation between…

The American Association of University Professors' revision of a 1966 statement concerning the role and responsibility of college faculty as teachers, colleagues, members of an institution, and members of a community is presented. (MSE)

Over the last 75 years the AAUP has made progress in specifying its standards of governance and in reconciling traditional governance with collective bargaining. Excerpts from the "Joint Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities" and the "Statement on Academic Government for Institutions Engaged in Collective…

The official AAUP Statement on Collective Bargaining, a revision of the statement adopted in 1973, is presented as prepared by the Association's Committee N on Representation of Economic and Professional Interests in Consultation with the Collective Bargaining Congress. Policy for collective bargain chapters is outlined. (LB)

A policy statement prepared by a joint committee of the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges about retirement plans and plans for insurance benefits for faculty members and administrators is presented. (MLW)

A statement by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors on the organization "Accuracy in Academia" is presented. External monitoring of in-class statements presents the prospect that words uttered will be distorted or taken out of context and have a chilling effect. (MLW)

The American Association of University Professors' Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure recommends every institution assure legal representation and indemnification to its faculty subject to lawsuits stemming from their professional performance in institutional service. Proposed specifications include legal representation and defrayal of…

This third report in a series concerning restraints by government agencies on academic research concerns and recommends withdrawal of a recent presidential directive establishing a mechanism for controlling the release of classified information to the public through a system of prior review by government officials. (MSE)

An American Association of University Professors report gives a brief history of corporate-university funding relationships, surveys the kinds of arrangements under which faculty are currently cooperating with business, describes the related concerns of interest to the association, and makes recommendations. (MSE)