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Eighty-seven Years and
Counting:
AAUP at the University of Washington
 The American Association of University Professors was launched
in January 1915 in response to the clear need for a nationwide organization that
could represent all faculty, not just those of a particular discipline. From the
outset its purpose was to establish a framework that would guarantee academic
freedom. From that initial meeting came the 1915 Declaration of Principles on
Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure which explained the necessity of a system
of tenure to guarantee freedom of inquiry and expression in academic life. Among
the scholars who drafted that document was Frederick M. Padelford,
Professor of English at the University of Washington. Three years later, in
1918, Padelford and others formed the University of Washington chapter of AAUP.
In the years that followed, AAUP would help to build the
University of Washington. Here are some highlights of that eighty-four year history
and links to more detailed discussions of some issues.
In the 1920s AAUP played a critical role in developing UW's reputation while promoting the 1915 statement of principles,
arguing for tenure and for a faculty role in the governance of the university.
In the 1930s AAUP convinced the administration to create a
Faculty Senate, a faculty code, and a system of tenure. Fragile at first,
these institutions survived and matured as a result of subsequent struggles and
active faculty vigilance.
During the Red Scare years after World War II, UW-AAUP
followed a contradictory path. In 1948 the legislature launched an investigation
to identify Communists and former Communists on the UW faculty. President
Raymond Allen then moved to fire six professors, all of them tenured members of
the faculty. AAUP waffled, defending the principles of academic freedom
and tenure but failing to stand resolutely behind the six faculty members. Three
were fired. At its national convention the next year AAUP took up the issue, but
six years elapsed without a report. Finally in 1956 the national body declared
that the University of Washington should have been censured for its 1949
abrogation of due process, academic freedom, and tenure. More on the Cold
War in Washington State.
For the next ten years AAUP campaigned to correct
the abuses of the Cold War clampdown on free speech. Working with the American
Civil Liberties Union, AAUP challenged the loyalty oaths that were required of
all university employees and contested campus bans on political speech and
controversial speakers. In an historic case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1964, the AAUP-ACLU legal team prevailed, ending thirty years of required
loyalty oaths.
In the early 1970s, AAUP worked with the Faculty Senate in
seeking collective bargaining rights for faculty. At a time when other public
employees were gaining the right of representation and collective bargaining,
the legislature had declined to cover employees of the 4-year institutions of
higher education. Larry Wilets was UW-AAUP president during the early
1970s. He fills in the story of UW
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE 1970'S: CLOSE--BUT NO CIGAR.
Collective bargaining rights remained a chapter priority
throughout the 1980s and 1990s, which saw several more near misses at the hands
of the state legislature. Some improvements in the faculty code were realized
during those decades, but the principle of shared governance suffered during the
presidency of William Gerberding.
As the 20th century drew to a close, the University of
Washington was changing rapidly. The faculty was becoming more diverse, and AAUP
made it a priority to support
affirmative action and to redress salary and promotion imbalances.
Ominously, tenure was also under assault. AAUP helped derail a plan to impose a
tenure-dismantling form of post-tenure review. When the governor's 2020
Commission on the Future of Higher Education began to spin expensive Distance
Learning pipe-dreams, the more than 900 signatures on AAUP's Open
Letter to Governor Locke and the 2020 Commission helped bring the planners
back to earth.
In 2002, the long-sought goal of achieving collective bargaining
rights was realized. The UW chapter played an important role in the campaign
both on campus and in Olympia. Governor Locke signed the
historic legislation on April 4, 2002.
The future presents many challenges. The
system of tenure at UW is dying the slow death of a thousand little cuts. Nearly
half of all faculty are denied the protections of tenure eligibility and each
year more and
more faculty positions are taken out of the tenure track. The concept of public
education is withering apace, as the legislature reduces its share of the
university budget. While faculty salaries fall further and further behind and
while corporate sponsorship and other forms of private funding replace the
public interest, the only thing clear is that faculty more than ever need to
vigilant and organized.
For more on the chapter's history read Nassir Isaf's essay
"AAUP
at UW: Old Challenges and New Challenges"
(written for HSTAA 450, Spring 2002).
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University
of Washington chapter