Thread by @AAUP

BREAKING: The AAUP has authorized an investigation into the extraordinary summary dismissal of 33 faculty members at @emporiastate, most of them long-serving professors with tenure.
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aaup.org/media-release/…

These termination decisions were apparently made w/out any meaningful faculty participation & w/out affording faculty members academic due process – both severe violations of widely accepted principles of #academicfreedom & tenure.
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As the AAUP wrote to the chair of the Kansas board of regents & the president of @emporiastate on 9/29, “It is difficult not to construe what has happened at ESU as a direct assault on tenure & #academicfreedom..."
aaup.org/sites/default/…
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These dismissals have grave implications for tenure & #academicfreedom, not only at @emporiastate but throughout the Kansas system of public higher education.
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ESU admin based their action on a so-called Framework for Workplace Management made possible by a Kansas Board of Regents policy enacted in January 2021 to address “extreme financial pressures placed on the state universities due to the pandemic.”
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insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/2…

Set to expire on 12/31/22, the policy suspends existing university regulations governing faculty dismissals for financial reasons. Although the Kansas board of regents offered the policy to all system institutions last year, ESU’s president was the only 1 to bite. 🧐
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The policy was implemented on September 14. Faculty members received their termination notices the next day.

AAUP standards require admin to declare that a bona fide financial exigency exists before taking steps to terminate tenured appointments.

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Tenured appointments are to be terminated as a last resort and only after all other “feasible alternatives have been pursued.” That doesn't appear to be the case at @emporiastate. Faculty were not involved in determining that a condition of financial exigency exists...
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...or in determining which positions should be eliminated.

Affected professors have the right to contest the termination of their appointments in a full hearing before an elected faculty committee.
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