DEFENDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ● PROTECTING FACULTY RIGHTS
Attacks against higher education are real, but so is the momentum to resist
Dear Colleagues,
Earlier today I was one of two AAUP/AFT-CCU Executive Committee members who attended the AAUP-SC chapter’s Kick-Off meeting. The meeting brought together around 25 chapter leaders and activists from across the state. In comparing notes, it is clear that higher education all across South Carolina is facing mounting challenges, ranging from the erosion of shared governance to direct threats against faculty, staff, and student rights that have been established for over 100 years in the United States.
At the same time, however, the AAUP is fighting back with force. The organization has added over 7,000 members nationwide since January of this year. Our local conference here in South Carolina grew by 100% between January and July. The AAUP-SC conference is building programming and preparing materials to provide help to faculty, staff, and students, oriented around key AAUP concepts such as shared governance, academic freedom, and improving working conditions for all.
In the midst of all this action, our university has a new president, Dr. James Winebrake. Dr. Winebrake comes to us from University of North Carolina Wilmington, which does not have an active AAUP chapter. However, the university includes the AAUP Standards of Shared Governance in its Faculty Resources page. The CCU chapter of AAUP/AFT intends to be proactive about reaching out to Dr. Winebrake and establishing a working relationship with him and his office. We will report our progress to you with frequency.
Please remember to reach out should you have questions or concerns about working at CCU that fall under shared governance and academic freedom. Additionally, reach out to your new colleagues and urge them to get in touch with AAUP/AFT-CCU by going to our website.
In Solidarity – Joseph Fitsanakis, PhD, President AAUP/AFT-CCU
AAUP-SC adopts DEI statement. Right before the end of the spring 2025 semester, the South Carolina Conference of the AAUP adopted a collaboratively-written statement in support of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The statement was the result of a collaboration of members of Committee T on Governance, the AAUP Executive Council, and members in attendance at the AAUP-SC Spring meeting. Also at the Spring meeting, AAUP-SC adopted a set of “aspirational” best practices regarding how institutions employ adjunct faculty. This set of practices grew out of the work of Committee Z on Equity in the Profession and were informed by reports by the College of Charleston Faculty Welfare Committee in 2017, the committee’s survey of adjunct faculty in 2023, and subsequent conversations with respondents, AFT and AAUP resources, other print sources, and consultations with AAUP-SC membership.
● In part the statement reads: “We affirm that diversity, equity, and inclusion are legitimate and compelling aims of higher education institutions and strongly urge that the administrations and boards of South Carolina’s public and private colleges and universities avoid engaging in anticipatory obedience to proposed state and national legislation and to the flurry of vague and expansive orders from the federal government’s executive branch“.
Participate in AAUP ‘Faculty in the South’ survey. The Georgia conference of the AAUP and its partners in states across the South have been at the forefront of fighting attacks on higher education. To assist in that fight, the would like to know your opinion as a faculty member if you work in one of the following 12 states: South Carolina, among other southern states. Please participate in and spread through your faculty networks the 2025 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey. You can see results from previous years here. AAUP/AFT-CCU will share the results of the survey later this semester.
● Key findings from the 2024 survey indicate that about 60 percent [58.7] of respondents would not recommend their state as a desirable place to work for colleagues, while 28 percent were planning to apply in another state in the coming year. That same amount [27.7 percent] had applied for academic jobs in other states since 2022. The top five states for those applications were: California, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Illinois. Every state in the nation was listed at least four times. More than a quarter [27.7 percent] said they did not plan to stay in academia long term.
AAUP releases report on artificial intelligence and the academic professions. Educational technology, or ed-tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), continues to become more integrated into teaching and research in higher education, with minimal oversight. The AAUP’s ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions—composed of higher education faculty members, staff, and scholars interested in technology and its impact on academic labor— conducted a survey with a sample of five hundred members from nearly two hundred campuses across the country, collected during a two-week time period. You can download the report here.
● Survey respondents emphasized the importance of improving education on AI, promoting shared governance through policies and oversight, and focusing on equity, transparency, and worker protections.
● Among the committee’s five recommendations was “Implementing Shared Governance Policies to Promote Oversight”, which notes that AI integration initiatives are spearheaded by administrations with little input from faculty members and other campus community members, including staff and students. There are thus high levels of concern around AI and technology procurement, deployment, and use; dehumanized relations; and poor working and learning conditions.
The 2024 AAUP Community College Shared Governance survey results are now out. For more than a century, the AAUP has conducted or sponsored national shared governance surveys at four-year colleges and universities. In 2024, the AAUP, in partnership with the Center for the Study of Community Colleges, conducted an inaugural shared governance survey focused on community colleges, the institutions educating nearly 40 percent of all undergraduates in the United States. Findings from this survey provide insights into areas of faculty authority and administrative collaboration in the nation’s public community colleges and allow for a more robust understanding of shared governance across American higher education. You can access the survey results here.
● Overall, the results of the survey present a mixed picture of community college shared governance. At most responding institutions, and especially at responding institutions with tenure systems, faculty authority is consistent with AAUP-recommended governance standards in decision-making about programmatic, departmental, and institutional curricula; teaching assignments; salary policies; and faculty searches, evaluations, and tenure and promotion standards.
● However, in several decision-making areas, including budgets, buildings, provost selection, and strategic planning, community college faculty have few meaningful opportunities to participate. In these areas, community colleges deviate from the principles outlined in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, which emphasizes faculty involvement in personnel decisions and budget preparation.
● Although questions continue to be raised about the relationship between collective bargaining and shared governance, few statistically significant differences between unionized and nonunionized colleges were apparent in this survey or in the AAUP’s 2021 survey of four-year institutions. Indeed, the areas where collective bargaining did appear to make a (statistically significant) difference were those typically specified in bargaining agreements, including salary policies and teaching loads.
AAUP-CCU 