The AAUP is investigating restrictions imposed on Texas's public universities.
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An American Association of University Professors committee is investigating academic freedom and shared governance violations across Texas, where public university leaders have restricted what faculty can teach, and where Republican lawmakers have put faculty governing bodies under university presidents’ control.
“The issues in Texas have been piling up over the last number of years, but they’ve accelerated in the last, I’d say, nine months,” AAUP national president Todd Wolfson said at a news conference Tuesday. He added that “because of that rapid acceleration, and because we’re looking at extreme distress among our members and other faculty and staff and students across the state, we felt like we had to act.”
AAUP investigations can lead to public censure of university administrations and bring attention to restrictions on faculty freedoms. Wolfson said “the investigation will examine the implementation of Senate Bill 37 and related state actions, growing political control over curriculum and teaching, restrictions on faculty governance, the closure of academic programs, increasing governing board intervention into academic affairs, limitations on protest and campus speech, and other state and institutional policies that affect the freedom to teach, learn, research and govern our higher education institutions democratically.”
