The national AAUP organization rests upon three pillars: academic freedom, faculty governance, and higher education as a public good. As a defender of these values, the UA chapter of the AAUP must respond to HB580, a bill recently filed in the Alabama legislature. HB580 attacks each of these values, and, if enacted, would seriously damage The University of Alabama.
The University of Alabama (UA) is the leading employer in the state. Over generations, our university community has built a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. UA became recognized as a leading research (R1) university as recently as 2018–due, in part, to the high-level research grant portfolio built by UA professors and expanded doctoral education. We now attract students and faculty from all over the state, country, and world because we have created and nurtured a climate where faculty can teach and research, guided by peer-reviewed and accredited expertise, free from political interference. Our graduates can be confident that they received a cutting-edge education and have been exposed to the most important debates in their fields. For this reason, the skills learned at UA transfer nationally and our degrees are valued internationally. When politicians assume they have greater expertise than those with disciplinary training, they threaten what our intellectual community in Alabama has carefully built for the state and its population, and degrade the value of the education we work hard to provide.
The AAUP chapter at UA rejects all legislation that seeks to regulate or oversee the affairs of curriculum, promotion, accreditation, or post-tenure review. We reject all attempts to dictate what can be taught in the college classroom. We insist meaningful faculty governance be maintained or expanded and we reject all anti-democratic and anti-American suppression of shared governance. We are grateful that our AAUP faculty ranks swell daily and encourage interested faculty to join us in defending our avocation.
Below we outline the critical flaws in each component of HB580.
Dismissal of Tenureline Faculty: HB580 aims to empower a Governing Board to dismiss tenure-line faculty for vaguely defined reasons, whether failing to “successfully complete any post-tenure review professional development program,” when such programs in reality do not exist, or for “conduct involving moral turpitude,” when neither turpitude nor conduct is defined. Such subjective phrasing intentionally exposes all faculty to arbitrary political power. Further, in a political climate where subjective moral judgment is casually employed to attack individuals of marginalized and minoritized groups, this law appears drafted to discriminate on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The Faculty Handbook already outlines well-functioning and staged disciplinary policy that applies to all faculty, including tenured faculty.
Tenure and Post-tenure review: HB580 calls for post tenure review. In fact, the university already has in place rigorous mechanisms of post-tenure review. All faculty currently undergo annual review, and are rated on their performance in research, teaching, and service. Administrative leaders have latitude to support or sanction faculty post-tenure who are not meeting standards. This law seeks to upend a functioning process without consent. It makes no sense to attempt to legislate UA procedures that are already in place.
Accreditation Exception: HB580 seeks to override national accreditation. National accreditation ensures that our faculty teach with innovative and evidence-based approaches to research and practice. National accreditation also ensures that our university degrees retain their value across the nation. Given that nearly half of UA’s student body hails from out of state and require transferrable degrees and credentials, the legislative overreach here comes at the peril of the state’s reputation, economy, and academic prestige.
Faculty Senate: The UA chapter of AAUP resoundingly supports the principles of shared governance. The university benefits from a fully representative elected faculty senate which shares power and decision making with administration. We encourage the current faculty senate to expand beyond its advisory role. HB580 views things differently. It abandons the familiar tradition that lets us elect our own representatives, and seeks instead to populate a senate with faculty senators appointed by a university president. We reject this autocratic approach to governance. We reject HB580’s attempt to limit what faculty senators can debate. We reject HB580’s attack on what the senate body can issue in statement. Free speech, elected representatives, shared governance: we cannot abide to see these foundational rights attacked by this bill.
Control over Curriculum: HB580 seeks to exert government control over university curricula, against both the University of Alabama Board of Trustees which prohibits influence from an outside body, and against AAUP principles, which the Trustees cite in advancing these protections. Academic freedom means that faculty design curricula and activities based on the mandates of proven research and established pedagogy, free from the influence of Board members, University administration, or legislators. HB580 seeks to destroy academic freedom. We insist that faculty, as experts in our various disciplines and stewards of research, theories, and practices in our fields, retain full autonomy and ownership over our curricula.
HB580 would negatively impact higher education in Alabama. It would damage the university as an international brand, as an economic engine, and as an autonomous institution of higher learning. This prediction is not merely speculative. We can simply look to Florida, which passed and implemented similar legislation a few years ago, to see that our concerns are very real. Studies have shown that combination of anti-DEI legislation and the prospect of an ideologically-driven post-tenure review process has led to a significant decrease in faculty morale, resulting in what many observers have called a “brain drain” of talented and productive faculty out of the state university system.
The introduction of HB580, in combination with anti-DEI legislation (SB129) passed two years ago, has already led to a significant decrease in faculty morale at the University of Alabama. Many of our colleagues have left for other jobs, or are actively applying elsewhere. If HB580 is passed, this will have serious downstream consequences, not just for the quality of the education that we can offer, but eventually it may lead to a significant decline in revenues through lost external grant funds and declining enrollment–especially at the graduate level. HB 580 would likely result in the unintended consequences of a decline in UA’s international reputation as a top-level research institution and UA’s ability to recruit top talent.
Ultimately, HB580, would prevent the university community from fulfilling our mission statement: “The University of Alabama will advance the intellectual and social condition of the people of the state, the nation and the world through the creation, translation and dissemination of knowledge with an emphasis on quality programs in the areas of teaching, research and service.”
The UA AAUP is proud to advocate for the values of higher education and academic freedom. We invite all UA faculty and staff members to join our growing organization.
University of Alabama AAUP 