This report concerns the actions taken against Dr. Maura Finkelstein by the administration of Muhlenberg College, namely her termination without cause following allegations of anti-Zionism and discrimination based on her social media presence. The committee found that the Muhlenberg administration wrongly utilized the college's equal opportunity…

This report concerns actions taken in spring 2018 by the administration of Nunez Community College to terminate the services of Professor Richard Schmitt following his twenty-second year on the faculty. These actions were taken in apparent violation of his academic freedom and without affordance of the protections of academic due process to which…

This report concerns the action taken on September 15, 2022, by the administration of Emporia State University to terminate the appointments of thirty tenured and tenure-track faculty members under a temporary "COVID-related workforce management policy" adopted by the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) in January 2021. The investigating…

This report addresses the actions taken in September 2021 by the administration of Indiana University Northwest that led to the dismissal and revocation of tenure of Dr. Mark McPhail. The investigating committee found that IUN violated several AAUP-recommended standards of academic due process and the protection of intramural speech in the…

This report concerns the nonrenewal of the part-time appointment of Professor Erika López Prater at Hamline University after a student complained of having been offended by Professor López Prater's presentation of two images of the Prophet Muhammad during an online session of her art history class. The report also examines related matters…

This report concerns actions taken by Linfield University to terminate Dr. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured professor of English with ten years of full-time service. The Linfield administration has fully acknowledged that it declined to afford Professor Pollack-Pelzner a dismissal procedure. It has also stated that it dismissed Professor…

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of Spalding University to terminate the appointment of tenured professor of social work Erlene Grise-Owens after she criticized the administration's handling of an incident involving a student who brought a gun to a campus parking lot. The social work school's chair immediately alerted…

This report, prepared by the Association's staff, concerns the case of Dr. Jane Harty, a part-time faculty member with forty years of service in the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). In November 2018, Dr. Harty was suspended from her teaching responsibilities for the remainder of her one-year contract and informed that she…

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of University of Nebraska-Lincoln to suspend lecturer, Courtney Lawton from her teaching responsibilities--initially, for stated safety concerns. Lawton is a sixth-year doctoral student with a part-time appointment as lecturer for the 2017-18 academic year. She received threats after a video…

St. Edward's University is a private, four-year institution affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church that traces its beginnings to 1877, when the Congregation of Holy Cross, an order of French missionaries, founded St. Edward's Academy on farmland south of Austin, Texas. St. Edward's received its charter as a college in 1885 and as a university…

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of the Community College of Aurora, during the fourth week of the fall 2016 semester, to terminate the appointment of part-time instructor of philosophy, Nathanial Bork, without affordance of academic due process. Mr. Bork was dismissed after conveying his intention to send to the college's…

The focus on using the courts to abolish tenure is a distraction from the important work of improving teacher quality. Unfortunately, the recent decision of Vergara v. California has only perpetuated the mistaken notion that only after tenure is abolished can underperforming teachers be removed. But the authors contend that administrators,…

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of Collin College to terminate the services of Professors Lora Burnett, Suzanne Jones, and Michael Phillips. The investigating committee found that the administration's actions involved "egregious violations" of all three faculty members' academic freedom to speak as citizens and…

In the last few years, all but a few U.S. states have rushed to enact tougher teacher evaluation systems. Spurred by the incentives offered by two federal education initiatives--Race to the Top and the ESEA Flexibility Program--these states have designed teacher evaluation systems designed to "remove ineffective tenured and untenured…

Collective bargaining and faculty governance are sometimes perceived to be in conflict. Faculty members will debate about whether a specific issue--for example, program consolidations or early college/dual enrollment (where high school students earn college credits taking high school classes taught by high school teachers)--falls under governance…