Background
The single national organization in its field, the American Association of University Professors, is best known for its concern with academic freedom and faculty tenure. The Association formulated its principles of academic freedom in 1926 and revised them in 1940, both declarations being endorsed by the leading national learned societies. It encourages observance of these principles by the administrations of colleges and universities, mediates in cases of alleged violations, investigates irreconcilable disputes, and, through the action of its membership at annual meetings, may impose the censure of the Association on administrations where unsatisfactory conditions of academic freedom and tenure are found to exist. This censure, which publicly warns the profession of the existence of such conditions, is removed when the situation improves--which often means when a discharged professor has been reinstated.
The 1940 declaration holds that a university or college may not impose restraint upon a teacher's freedom to investigate or to expound within his own subject specialty. Likewise, an administration should recognize that a teacher, in speaking or writing "off campus," is entitled to the same freedoms enjoyed by all other citizens. Finally, any professor, with or without tenure, is entitled, in the event of discharge from his position for cause, to "academic due process," including a statement of the charges against him, hearing before his peers, right to counsel, and an impartial judgment.
In the 1950's, the majority of cases which brought AAUP censure involved accusations of leftist political affiliation, derived notably from the testimony, or refusal of professors to testify, before Congressional and state investigating committees. Then there was a preponderance of cases concerning professors discharged from Southern colleges and universities for espousal of integration. More recently, professors have had to grapple with accusations of failure to include certain ethnic groups' contributions within the framework of their course subjects.
In addition to its concern for academic freedom, the Association interests itself, through its numerous committees, in such matters as professional ethics, author-publisher contracts, governmental relations, recruitment of college teachers, and the like. Pursuant to the recommendation of a presidential commission in 1957 that faculty salaries be at least doubled within ten years, the Association's Committee on the Economic Status of the Profession began a program of publicly grading colleges and universities on the relative levels of their faculty salaries.
