AAUP and AFT-Wisconsin Condemn Attacks on Public Higher Education

AAUP
October 23, 2017

A series of recent actions taken by Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin state legislature, and the University of Wisconsin system board of regents represents a concerted attack on the university as a public good and on the university's role in fostering democratic participation.  The stewards of the university system appear determined to destroy it.

In 2011, Governor Walker proposed, and the legislature passed, Act 10, curtailing the system faculty's rights to negotiate collectively.  In 2015, the legislature severely weakened tenure, shared governance, and due process-and, by extension, academic freedom.  The board launched its own salvo earlier this month, approving an anti-free-speech proposal allowing for the expulsion of students for "disrupting the free speech of others," announcing a plan to merge the system's two- and four-year institutions, and changing the procedures governing searches for chancellors and presidents-all without meaningful faculty input.  Troublingly, the new search procedures put virtually the entire process of hiring new 'campus CEOs' in the hands of the very regents who seek to undermine the public obligation of the university, with limited roles for other campus constituencies.  At the time of this writing, there is also a bill before the state legislature that would abolish a partnership that allowed university employees to work and train students at Planned Parenthood.

Read the full statement at the national AAUP website here.