Dear Colleague,
This has been a year of ongoing challenges for higher education as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, requiring faculty members to adapt constantly and to work in solidarity with colleagues to reassert and protect the core values of the academic profession.
With just a few days left in 2021, I urge you to make a tax-deductible contribution to the AAUP Foundation before the new year.
As president of the AAUP and the AAUP Foundation, I am grateful for the generosity of all who have given already. Special recognition goes to our dedicated supporters who contribute every year—or every month through recurring donations—and to those who have given this year at the Beacon and Luminary levels (starting at $500 and $1,000, respectively) and whom we will recognize, along with all other donors who do not request anonymity, in our annual Honor Roll of Donors. If you have not yet had a chance to give, please consider the AAUP Foundation, the charitable and educational arm of the AAUP and the primary funder of some of its signature work, when making final decisions about year-end contributions.
The Foundation’s Academic Freedom Fund supports projects that safeguard academic freedom to create a higher education environment in which teaching, learning, and research can flourish. Through this fund, we support governance investigations and academic freedom investigations, underwrite costs for the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom, and provide grants to individual faculty members whose academic freedom has been violated. This year, a grant from the Academic Freedom Fund paid for our sweeping, omnibus governance investigation and special report, COVID-19 and Academic Governance, which documented what it called “opportunistic exploitations of catastrophic events” at eight institutions and resulted in sanctions for violating principles of academic governance for seven of them. Commitments for next year include funding for the special AAUP committee that will prepare a report on violations of principles of academic governance and persistent structural racism in the University of North Carolina system.
You can support this work by donating to the AAUP Foundation.
This year, our Foundation awarded an Academic Freedom Fund grant to Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, for his Faculty First Responders project, which helps faculty members learn how to respond quickly and effectively when they or their colleagues are targeted for truly brutal online harassment when their work, especially on topics related to race, is picked up by groups like Campus Reform whose agenda is to frighten faculty into submission and to stoke conservative outrage against higher education.
Your contribution of any amount will help to make possible essential projects like these.
The Foundation’s Legal Defense Fund supports litigation that protects academic freedom and professional rights, and it provides funding for the amicus briefs we file in cases with important implications for higher education. This year, the Foundation’s support allowed the AAUP to weigh in on a case about the teaching of ideas about race in Texas, a case involving the distribution of antiunion materials by Oregon State University, and a case concerning firearms at the University of Michigan.
We must continue the important work of the AAUP Foundation and expand its efforts.
Join me in making a difference for 2022 with a year-end gift.
Sincerely,
Irene Mulvey
President, AAUP and AAUP Foundation
P.S. If you prefer to donate by mail, please make a check payable to "AAUP Foundation" and send to:
AAUP Foundation
1133 Nineteenth Street NW, Suite 200
Washington DC 20036
