The AAUP’s purpose is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good. In 1900 when noted economist Edward Ross lost his job at Stanford University because Mrs. Leland Stanford didn’t like his views on immigrant labor and railroad monopolies, other professors were watching. The incident stuck in the mind of Arthur O. Lovejoy, philosopher at Johns Hopkins. When he and John Dewey organized a meeting in 1915 to form an organization to ensure academic freedom for faculty members, the AAUP was born. “Academic freedom” was a new idea then.

More than eighty years later the AAUP is still addressing the kinds of abuse that spurred Lovejoy and Dewey to organize the Association. Academia has changed a lot since 1915, but there are still people who want to control what professors teach and write. Thanks to the AAUP, academic freedom is recognized as the fundamental principle of our profession. Despite this acceptance, academic freedom remains vulnerable. The attacks are more subtle in some cases, but the response must always be decisive.

For more details please visit http://www.aaup.org