Record of the council: November 11-12, 2000

The Council of the Association met on November 11 and 12, 2000, at the Embassy Row Hilton in Washington, D.C. President Jane Buck presided. Members of the Council (with the exceptions of Professors Richard J. Boris, Jeffrey Halpern, James E. Perley, and Lawrence D. Weiss) were present, as was General Counsel David M. Rabban. General Secretary Mary Burgan and other members of the staff were in attendance. Professor Kerry E. Grant served as parliamentarian.

Professors Eileen Burchell, Janet M. West, and James M. Bergquist reported respectively for the Committee on Government Relations, the Nominating Committee, and the Committee on Organization. Professors Jeffrey A. Butts and Estelle S. Gellman reported respectively for the Assembly of State Conferences (ASC) and the Collective Bargaining Congress (CBC). Professor Rabban delivered the report of Office of Staff Counsel.

Association Budget

Secretary-Treasurer Kerry E. Grant reported that the Association expects to end 2000 with a budget deficit of $66,500. The budget adopted by the Council for 2001 is based on a projected budget deficit of $147,000. Grant observed that the fund balance for the Association remains steady.

Grievance Procedure

The Council adopted a new grievance procedure for complaints against the staffs handling of a matter, a process formerly associated with the annual meeting. The new procedure, which appears on page 56, calls for the president to appoint a standing Grievance Committee, as described in the procedure. The Council also revised the Standing Rules Governing the Annual Meeting, published on page 55, to disassociate the grievance process from the annual meeting.

Academic Freedom and Governance

Martin D. Snyder, program director for academic freedom and governance, reported on behalf of Joan Wallach Scott, chair of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, regarding the actions taken by Committee A at its meeting on November 3-4, 2000. Snyder reported that the committee approved the publication of the report "Incentives to Forgo Tenure" with an invitation for comment. It appears on pages 61-62. The committee also endorsed the substance of a draft report entitled "Protecting Human Beings: Institutional Review Boards and Social Science Research," which is being circulated to a number of other interested organizations for comment prior to preparation of the final text for publication.

The committee approved the circulation of a draft statement titled "Corporate Funding of Academic Research" to other interested organizations for comment, and also referred the document to the Committee on Professional Ethics for that body's review.

Snyder reported that the committee approved a letter to Provost Jonathan R. Cole of Columbia University, commending his support of the principles of free political expression and tenure, as articulated in the statement "On the Matter of Edward Said," which he issued on October 18, 2000.

Governance Conference

Martin Snyder reported an attendance of approximately 230 faculty members and administrators at the recent governance conference in Washington, D.C., which was cosponsored by the AAUP's Committee on College and University Government and the American Conference of Academic Deans. He indicated support for holding the event on an annual basis.

Resolution on Graduate Students at New York University

General Counsel David M. Rabban reported that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of the right of graduate assistants at NYU to engage in collective bargaining in the case of New York University and United Auto Workers. The AAUP filed an amicus brief in the case. The NYU administration has the option to appeal the decision in federal court.

The union election followed a favorable decision by the regional NLRB, and the results of that election were sequestered, pending the NLRB's final ruling. The Council discussed and approved the language of a resolution drafted by Professor Cary Nelson, which, if the disposition of challenged ballots shows that graduate assistants voted in favor of unionization, calls on the NYU administration to begin bargaining with graduate employees in good faith. (The results of the student election in favor of unionization were announced on November 15, 2000, and the Council's resolution, which appears on page 12, was forwarded to the NYU administration the following day.)

Joint Statements

The Council adopted the joint statement of the AAUP and the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America prepared at the conference titled "Intellectual Workers and Essential Freedoms: Journalists and Academics in the Twenty-first Century." The statement was published in the SeptemberOctober issue of Academe.

The Council endorsed "The Freedom to Read," a revision of a joint statement of the American Library Association and the Association of American Publishers.

The Council also endorsed a June 1999 statement by the Association of College and Research Librarians: "Intellectual Freedom Principles for Academic Libraries: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights." Deanna Wood requested that the letter of endorsement include a paragraph from the April 1973 Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians, as published in the eighth edition of the AAUP's Policy Documents and Reports, which assigns to college and university librarians the same rights afforded to other members of the faculty. That paragraph reads as follows: