NC-AAUP Becomes a Core Member of HOPE (April 2008)
NC-AAUP has become a Core Member of HOPE, a North Carolina Coalition dedicated to repealing General Statute §95-98, a statute that bans North Carolina public employees from collective bargaining. The NC HOPE Coalition consists of a Core Group of partners and a Support Group. In October 2005, the NC-AAUP unanimously endorsed the effort to repeal General Statute §95-98, and in September 2007, we became a supporting member of HOPE. The AAUP has consistently supported the right for any group of employees to come together for a collective cause, including collective bargaining.
RALEIGH, N.C. — A nearly 50-year-old ban on collective bargaining by hundreds of thousands of state and local government employees would be abolished from state law in a bill that cleared a House judiciary committee Tuesday.
The measure doesn't require all governments to enter into contracts or meet with their workers to discuss how workers will be paid or treated. But it would order the Office of State Personnel to set up a process by next spring to certify employee organizations to participate in state negotiations.
North Carolina and Virginia are the only states that expressly ban state and local governments from entering into collective bargaining deals with their employees. A United Nations agency earlier this year urged North Carolina to remove its 1959 ban. Read More
-- Post-9/11, many of the
most intense debates about academic freedom have involved Middle
Eastern studies. There have been numerous cases in which candidates
for jobs or tenure have been opposed at least in part because of
their views on the Middle East, with recent flare-ups at Barnard
College and Wayne State University. At least 15 of the professors
named by David Horowitz in his book last year on “the 101
most dangerous academics” study the Middle East — a
proportion that is notable when considering that Middle Eastern
studies programs are relatively small, and most students never take
a course in the subject.
In this environment, the Task Force on Middle
Eastern Anthropology has issued a new handbook, “Academic
Freedom and Professional Responsibility After 9/11.” Most
of the handbook would apply well beyond anthropology and the project
was endorsed by leading scholars of the Middle East from a range
of disciplines — many of them professors whose work has been
criticized by pro-Israel and conservative groups.
--Studies that indicate college faculty
members are liberals who pound a liberal ideology into the minds
of impressionable college students rely on flawed methodology, according
to a new assessment of faculty bias studies. Those studies also
exclude community-college faculty members, which should further raise
questions about the veracity of these studies, say officials with
the American Federation of Teachers, which commissioned the review.
“Faculty
Bias: Science or Propoganda?” by AFT consultant John Lee
looked at eight studies that determined a liberal bent in academia to see if
the studies met the minimum criteria for research standards.The analysis found
that none of the eight reports met the standards required for a legitimate
research study. Several authors speculate about their research implications,
writes Lee, but the speculation is based on their perspectives and
not as a result of their research.
--Washington, D.C. — In a new report released Dec. 13, 2006, the
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) provides new data
to document the increasing predominance of non-tenure-track faculty
in America’s colleges and universities. The AAUP Contingent Faculty
Index 2006 provides data specific to individual college and university
campuses on the number of full-time faculty with and without tenure,
the number of part-time faculty, and the number of graduate student
employees. Together, the categories of contingent faculty—both
full- and part-time faculty whose positions are not on the tenure track—comprised
65 percent of all faculty in 2003, and their numbers continue to grow.
Because academic freedom for contingent faculty members is not assured,
and because contingent instructors are generally not provided with the
level of institutional support required to deliver a quality education,
the emergence of a contingent faculty represents a fundamental change
in the nature of higher education.
Proposed Government Oversight of Teaching and Learning
--With all freedoms come responsibilities. While all participants
in academic life have a right to retain and express (in appropriate
venues) their beliefs and opinions, the AAUP holds that teachers and
researchers are responsible "by example and practice, to abide
by the best scholarly and ethical standards of their disciplines" as
the AAUP Statement on Professional Ethics says. Students, for their
part, are responsible for "maintaining standards of academic
performance established for each course in which they are enrolled" (Joint
Statement on the Rights and Freedom of Students).
In the United States, neither teachers nor students are responsible to the government for the content of their teaching or learning.
But since 2004, nearly two dozen state legislatures have considered legislative proposals challenged the fundamental concept that higher education in the U.S. is and should be free of government control or interference. None of the 14 states approved the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights," which would involve the state and/or federal government in oversight of curricula and teaching, and faculty hiring and promotion in both public and private institutions of higher education. Colorado and Ohio legislatures worked out agreements with public colleges and universities to ensure that students were aware of their rights and existing grievance processes, and Pennsylvania decided to study the notion further by forming a committee to hold hearings across the state. The committee’s final report, released in November 2006, concluded that there is not a problem with Pennsylvania’s higher education system, and that universities have policies in place to handle any issues that may arise in the future. The Higher Education Act reauthorization language passed by the U.S. House included language drawn from the Academic Bill of Rights, but this language is unlikely to make it into the legislation when the 110th Congress convenes in 2007. .
The AAUP has sharply criticized the so-called academic bill of rights as unnecessary and almost certain to compromise academic freedom rather than defend it. At their core, its measures would place decisions about faculty appointments and the content of academic programs in the hands of political officials, thereby jeopardizing not only the independence of faculty members and their institutions but also their capacity to advance knowledge and educate our students. Read the 2003 statement on the Academic Bill of Rights issued by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
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