3 Colleges added to the AAUP Censure list

The American Association of University Professors on Saturday added three colleges to its list of censured institutions, and took two institutions off the list. The net change leaves 47 colleges on the list of colleges “not observing the generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure.”
The association voted at its annual meeting to censure Meharry Medical College, the University of the Cumberlands, and Virginia State University. Southern Nazarene and Wingate Universities were voted off the list. In addition, the association condemned recent actions at Benedict College and at the City University of New York.
Institutions are placed on the list following investigations by an AAUP investigating committee and a review by the association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom. Typically institutions are only removed from the list after negotiations with the association and changes in policies.
Joan W. Scott, chair of the academic freedom committee, said that the cases of censure this year illustrated a continuing problem with “autocratic presidents” who ignore faculty rights.
Two of the colleges censured Saturday (Meharry and Virginia State) along with one of the colleges criticized (Benedict) and the only college added to the censure list last year (Philander Smith) are historically black. Scott, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J., said that she thought there was “a culture of autocracy” at some historically black colleges. A similar problem exists at small religious colleges, she said, a group that is also disproportionately represented on the AAUP’s censure list.
“Too many presidents at these institutions have a sense of being outside the general rules of shared governance,” she said.

Full Story: http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/13/aaup