Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) – Association of University Professors (AAUP)

What We Do

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is a nonprofit membership association of faculty and other academic professionals. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s universities and colleges.

For over 100 years, the American Association of University Professors has worked to:

• Advance and defend academic freedom
• Establish standards such tas he 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
• Promote shared governance and the importance of faculty governance
• Define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education
• Advocate for rights, working conditions, and economic security of all faculty
• Organize and advocate for higher education as a public good
• Combat threats to these principles by legislatures and university administrations
• Publish the bi-monthly magazine Academe, the Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, guidebooks, toolkits for organizing for local chapters, fighting educational gag orders, government relations, etc., resources for racial justice and for improving conditions for faculty on contingent appointments, and information on and strategies for combatting political interference in higher ed
• provide training for activists to make local change
• shape the law, influence legislation, and analyze key legal developments
• promote faculty collective bargaining and resolve employment disputes

Our local IUB-AAUP chapter promotes these fundamental AAUP principles:

• We monitor changes to university policies regarding academic freedom, tenure and promotion, and due process.
• Our local Committee A on Academic Freedom advises and vigorously advocates for ALL IUB faculty colleagues, graduate students, and other members of the university community who believe that their academic freedom has been violated.
• We organize events–including events to raise awareness of pressing issues at IUB, in Indiana, and beyond—that bring us together as colleagues.
• We collaborate with the Bloomington Faculty Council, as well as many other local and state organizations and AAUP chapters, to foster academic values and defend faculty rights.

Why Join

Member benefits include:

• Timely news to keep you informed of challenges to and upcoming threats to American higher education and our rights, as well strategies used by other local AAUP chapters and members fighting on the front lines to preserve academic freedom, shared governance, and quality in higher education.
• Automatic membership in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and access to benefits available to AFT members. For more information on benefits, see Member Benefits.
• A subscription to Academe.
• Access to members-only resources on the AAUP website, including: AAUP reports, toolkits, and guidebooks for organizing on campus, for strengthening our faculty handbook, and for navigating faculty appointment issues.

Perhaps the most important benefits, however, are less tangible. They include the types of support that only a large, national association can provide in the collective effort to fight for academic values at a time when they are under attack. AAUP membership is about meeting our own needs and upholding professional and academic principles for ourselves and the next generation. Your dues also support the profession and faculty across the country who benefit from academic freedom, tenure, and other core issues that the AAUP has fought to establish and defend for decades.

When you join the AAUP, you become a part of higher education’s most influential voice on the Bloomington campus and nationally. Together, we defend academic freedom. We affirm the importance of faculty governance. We pursue economic security for all faculty. As the face of the academic workforce changes, we continue to organize to make our standards a reality.

Join us in the AAUP to preserve due process and free speech in the classroom, to preserve a strong faculty role in university governance, and to protect this generation of scholars and those to come. Each new member strengthens our faculty voice on campus and across the state and nation.

Who can join

Membership is open to anyone at IUB whose professional appointment involves teaching and/or research, including contingent faculty, tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, graduate-student employees, academic specialists, postdocs, librarians, archivists, curators, and technicians. People retired from teaching and/or researching at IUB are also welcome to join. Community members, senior administrators, and other supporters of IUB teaching and research may join as associate members.

Annual membership dues for the AAUP national organization are on a sliding scale based on self-reported income; they can be paid monthly. Our local IUB chapter does not charge additional chapter membership dues.

Join the AAUP today!