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ERIC Number: ED526962
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Oct
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Academic Freedom and Tenure: Savannah College of Art and Design. A Supplementary Report on a Censured Administration. Report
American Association of University Professors
This paper presents a supplementary report on the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) censure. Placement of the Savannah College of Art and Design on the Association's censure list, by the 1993 annual meeting, followed from the SCAD administration's dismissal of two faculty members without having demonstrated cause, thereby denying them academic due process. The AAUP investigation also found a prima facie case of violations of the academic freedom of six faculty members in the administration's action to deny them reappointment. Correspondence and occasional discussions about the censure and its removal were entirely unproductive until May 2010, when a delegation of new SCAD administrators, expressing determination to resolve the censure, met in Washington with AAUP staff members. The delegation responded favorably to specific staff recommendations regarding revisions in official SCAD policies to bring them into essential accord with AAUP-supported standards and regarding settlements with the faculty members whose cases led to the censure. By spring 2011, the SCAD administrators reported adoption of suitable official polices and agreement on the sums to be paid to released faculty members to resolve their cases. The only remaining step in anticipation of censure removal, once the settlements were offered, was a visit to SCAD by an AAUP representative who would meet with administration and faculty leaders and provide resulting impressions of the current climate at the college for academic freedom. The unexpected sharply negative developments for censure removal described in this report largely speak for themselves, and a single concluding observation would seem in this case to suffice. Committee A, in considering whether to recommend removing a censure, has been interested not only in settlements of cases and corrections of deficiencies in stated policies but also in the current climate at the institution for academic freedom and due process. An AAUP representative commonly makes a brief visit to the institution for this purpose, particularly an institution like SCAD where an AAUP chapter does not exist and direct contact in recent years with faculty members has been scant. By setting extremely restrictive conditions for allowing a visit to occur, however, the administration itself placed massive limitations on freedom at SCAD to seek truth. The administration's apparent zeal to control the content of a visitor's report about academic freedom ironically provided abundant evidence that the current climate at SCAD for academic freedom is sorely deficient. (Contains 2 footnotes.)
American Association of University Professors. 1012 Fourteenth Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC 20005. Tel: 800-424-2973; Tel: 202-737-5900; Fax: 202-737-5526; e-mail: academe@aaup.org; Web site: http://www.aaup.org
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: American Association of University Professors
Identifiers - Location: Georgia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A