AAUP leader Donald Koster dies

Donald N. Koster, a longtime AAUP leader, died in September at the age of ninety. Koster became a member of the Association in 1945, while on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. He remained active in the AAUP throughout his career.

In 1946 Koster joined the English department at Adelphi University, where he taught until his retirement in 1978. He was cofounder of the AAUP chapter at Adelphi and cofounder and first president of the Metropolitan New York AAUP conference, which later merged with the New York state AAUP conference. In 1960 Koster was a founding officer of the Assembly of State Conferences, and he served on the national AAUP Council from 1969 to 1971. From 1976 to 1978 he chaired the New York conference's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Koster also served on three national ad hoc committees charged with investigating academic freedom and tenure cases at Monmouth University (1968); the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1986); and Temple University (1984). He chaired the committee that investigated the Temple case.

Koster was something of an independent crusader for academic freedom and tenure; he defended almost twenty faculty members against dismissal, according to his son, Donald Koster, Jr. One such case involved a professor of chemistry in Philadelphia whose institution tried to dismiss him without good reason in 1982. Koster helped the professor prepare a case and then represented him in academic hearings.

"The college had several administrators and legal counsel representing it," the professor, who asked that his name be withheld, says. "But Koster was eloquent and competent, and he devastated their case." In one instance, the professor says, Koster demonstrated that the charges of incompetence leveled by the administration against the chemistry professor were lifted almost verbatim from another dismissal case. The faculty hearing body found resoundingly in the professor's favor, and the administration did not pursue the matter further.

The AAUP honored Koster in a 1995 ceremony for fifty-year members of the Association. In his remarks acknowledging the honor, Koster demonstrated his continuing devotion to the AAUP and its principles. "Among the stalwart AAUP volunteers, few have come close to matching the quality and quantity of his contributions," says AAUP associate general secretary Jordan Kurland, who worked with Koster for more than three decades. "Particularly striking was Koster's uncanny ability to take on a seemingly hopeless case and, through great skill and persistence, bring it to a successful resolution."

"Aside from classroom teaching, the most important thing in my father's career was making sure the rights of professors were safeguarded," says Koster, Jr. "He had a career-long commitment to the principles of the AAUP."