Report: Report of Committee A, 1998-99

The year 1998-99 is notable chiefly for the record number of institutions which the annual meeting removed from the Association's list of censured administrations. For the first time in several years, the number of removal actions substantially exceeded the number of institutions added to the censure list. This result reflected a hope expressed in last year's Committee A report, continuing and conscientious efforts on the part of Committee A's staff, and a commendable commitment by the administrations and governing boards of each of the institutions to demonstrate achievements of the conditions requisite for censure removal.

Related Results

Another salutary development the past academic year was the addition of eight new signatories to the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure-a diverse and varied group of scholarly organizations, some quite recent in formation (The Historical Society, for example), and others of longer standing but of recent commitment to the 1940 Statement (The Association for Theatre in Higher Education, for example). Such impressive growth in the roster of adherents-now numbering 167-attests to the continuing vitality and appeal within the academic community of the Association's most basic values and principles.

Despite such very welcome developments, the general condition of academic freedom at the close of the millennium must be described as mixed. While the threats these days seldom occur in the crude forms of earlier decades, several worrisome trends continue-growing reliance on part-time and other non-tenure-track faculty for basic teaching; rising popularity of alternative (nontenure-eligible) faculty employment arrangements, such as fulltime term contracts; expansion and increased acceptance of distance education arrangements that seem inimical to traditional academic values; and special concerns in such vital sectors as medical education, legal education, and Catholic colleges and universities. Committee A during the year turned its attention to the potential jeopardy each of these areas poses to academic freedom and tenure.

This also marks a time of notable transition within the professional staff. Jordan Kurland, who for three-and-a-half decades has inspired the work of Committee A, and has been a wise and patient counselor not only to countless embattled professors but also to innumerable institutions seeking guidance in academic freedom and tenure matters, is assuming a modified role within the Association. Through the fall and winter months, Martin Snyder will gradually assume the major Committee A leadership role. During that period and well beyond, however, Jordan Kurland's unmatched understanding of Association policy and practice, and the long-standing confidence of the higher education community in him, will be indispensable to the smooth transition that should ensure the Association's central role in its core activity of protecting academic freedom and tenure. Also vital to that transition are the expertise and dedication of the other members of the Committee A staff in the Association's Washington office, who throughout the past year continued to handle an average of five or more cases or complaints every business day.

Judicial Business

Imposition of Censure

At its June meeting, Committee A considered three cases that had been the subject of reports published in Academe since the 1998 annual meeting. In one of those cases, publication of the report seemed an appropriate and adequate measure, and no further action was recommended. In the other two cases, the committee adopted the following statements. The Council concurred in them, and in both cases the annual meeting voted to place the institution on the Association's list of censured administrations. (It should be noted that at the time of the annual meeting five additional cases were under active investigation, at various stages in process, potentially leading to reports published prior to the June 2000 meeting of Committee A.) Johnson er Wales University. The investigating committee's report concerns the decision, conveyed by the administration of Johnson & Wales University on May 18, 1998, to two first-year faculty members, not to renew their appointments beyond that academic year. The administration provided no explanation to one faculty member for not renewing her appointment, and gave an inadequate oral explanation to the second faculty member. The only procedure for appeal within the university was to the vice president for academic affairs, who informed each faculty member that renewal of a faculty appointment is an "employer prerogative" and as such is exempt from the appeal procedure. The investigating committee concluded that the Johnson & Wales University administration denied the two faculty members academic due process to which they were entitled under the Association's Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. The investigating committee found further that the notice of nonreappointment that they received was egregiously late under the Association's standards for notice.