THE DAVID R. KELLER CHAPTER OF THE AAUP / AFT AT UVU

The following from Alex Simon, who has rejoined our faculty after several years in Alaska.    Thanks for the invitation to blog. I will definitely join the local AAUP chapter.  Here is the original article which resulted in me having a very public confrontation with Chancellor Pugh over academic freedom. I am convinced that without a union I would have been fired. http://juneauempire.com/stories/020509/loc_385027568.shtml Here is an editorial that AAUP Secretary Gary Rhoades wrote in response to the legislator’s threats to cut university funding: http://juneauempire.com/stories/020809/opi_385924086.shtml And here is an article which appeared in Inside Higher Education regarding the confrontation I had with Pugh regarding academic freedom. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/10/sex

18 October 2011 An Open Letter to Ian Wilson, Vice President for Academic Affairs, UVU Dear Ian,             I’ve been thinking a lot about our meeting last week. In several ways it was an important event, certainly for those of us in the AAUP, perhaps for you as well and for the University in general. In two decades of work with the AAUP, first at BYU and then at UVSC/UVU, I have often spoken with administrators about matters of concern, but only when we pushed a specific issue and then in an adversarial role.             Your invitation, then, with no current issue at stake, was unprecedented and even generous. It extends a pattern you have set over the years and especially since becoming VPAA, a pattern of openness to competing ideas and of concern for the opinions of all of us who work together at the University. Your speech in August to the CHSS faculty in which...