The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is a union and membership organization for faculty. Among its missions is to “define fundamental professional values and standards” in part as a defense against outside interference. They’ve failed that part of their mission. The AAUP has long been a typical left-wing organization—see the 2015 essay, “The AAUP Takes a Sharp Left Turn“—and this year they’re doubling down on that image. For example, the AAUP chapter at Rutgers sent this email:
It includes an announcement that they formed a committee “after Trump’s election to prepare for the new wave of attacks we know are on the way from a fascist, racist, xenophobic administration.” The AAUP used to recognize the danger of such “intemperate partisanship.” In one of their foundational documents in 1915, the AAUP wrote:
If this profession should prove itself unwilling to purge its ranks of the incompetent and the unworthy, or to prevent the freedom which it claims in the name of science from being used as a shelter for inefficiency, for superficiality, or for uncritical and intemperate partisanship, it is certain that the task will be performed by others.
As the Rutgers email indicates, the AAUP has failed to police its ranks. Given this abdication of their responsibility, it should not be a surprise that others are seeking to perform the task.
The AAUP of 2025 should have heeded the warnings of the AAUP of 1915.
Image: “Strike at Rutgers-Camden, 2023” by Barthe93 on Wikimedia Commons
WOW — this is an iceberg and the AAUP — which used to be (and I believe still claims to be) a nonprofit charitable organization, has now merged with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — one of the two national K-12 teacher’s unions, the other being the Never Educate Anyone, aka National Educational Association (NEA).
This apparently happened in June of 2022.
I missed this — and only stumbled across it in pulling the Rutgers union contract:
https://rutgersaaup.org/full-time-faculty-and-graduate-workers-contract/
This raises lots of interesting questions because as a labor union, with a fiduciary duty to the barganing unit and everyone in it, they are no longer able to objectively speak for higher education in general. I’m not sure about all of the legal consequences of this merger, but the professional association no longer exists.
“As the Rutgers email indicates, the AAUP has failed to police its ranks. Given this abdication of their responsibility, it should not be a surprise that others are seeking to perform the task.”
No — and this is why someone who knows a whole lot more about labor law than I do ought to address this — as a labor union representing the barganing unit, the AAUP has a legal (fiduciary) duty to represent everyone in its ranks. It has to defend those whom others seek to police, it can’t also be the policeman.
Again, someone who knows more about labor law ought to write this, but there were no public sector unions in 1914 (or 1941) — both George Meaney of the AFL-CIO and Franklin Roosevelt were adamantly opposed to public sector unionization. Remember that the Boston Police Strike was in 1919 and they were all summarily fired because there was “no right to strike against the public interest.”
And then there is Section 6 of the contract — the DEI part:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xj4lT-mJoV4zgm0aQMNUGPuON7eAslHy/view
Portions of this violates Federal law. Sections 7, 8, & 9 are questionable, Section 10 calls for a $125,000 handout which definitely is illegal, and all of this has flown below the radar in a union contract that puts Rutgers — a public land grant university — into the uncomfortable position of defying Trump.
Paging Secretary McMahon, Paging Secretary McMahon….