AAUP: Professors Should Run Regents

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) thinks that it should govern a university’s governing boards. “The ground rules here are very well established and fundamental to the effecting management of the university,”Steve Mumme and Margaret LeCompte write on the academe blog maintained by the AAUP. “In what is the most authoritative and widely used guidance for the governance of American colleges and universities, published in 1966, the American Association of University Professors, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the American Council on Education jointly issued their famous Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.”

“It specifically defines the unique role of university governing boards this way: ‘The governing board of an institution of higher education, while maintaining a general overview, entrusts the conduct of the administration to the administrative officers—the president and the deans—and the conduct of teaching and research to the faculty. The board should undertake appropriate self-limitation.'”

Mumme is a professor at Colorado State University and the AAUP-Colorado Conference Co-President, and LeCompte is a Professor Emerita and President of the AAUP Chapter, University of Colorado at Boulder. As you might guess, all of the above take a dim view of regents attempting to represent anybody but, well, them.

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