AAUP Plans to Investigate Clark Atlanta U. Over Faculty Layoffs

by E Wayne Ross on May 12, 2009

The Chronicle: AAUP Plans to Investigate Clark Atlanta U. Over Faculty Layoffs

The American Association of University Professors today informed Clark Atlanta University of plans to investigate the university over its dismissal of 70 full-time faculty members in February.

In a letter to Clark Atlanta’s president, Carlton E. Brown, the associate secretary of the AAUP, B. Robert Kreiser, wrote that the institution’s “massive dismissals of faculty” raised “key issues of academic freedom, tenure, and due process” that remain unresolved after two months of communications with the university. Accordingly, Mr. Kreiser said, the AAUP plans to establish an investigative panel to determine whether the association’s committee on academic freedom and tenure needs to take action against the university.