As of June, 2022, the president of the chapter is Lisa Uddin (Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture Studies, and Paul Garett Fellow), the vice president is Jack Jackson (Associate Professor of Politics), and the Secretary-Treasurer is Pavel Blagov (Associate Professor of Psychology).

In early November, the AAUP chapter contacted Danielle Garbe Reser’97, Chair of the Presidential Search Committee, and made the requests below of the search committee’s members.

The Three Requests

• A request to include the chapter among those groups from the college community that will have a chance to meet with candidates for present selected for campus visits.
• A request that each of these candidates be asked to respond to three specific questions about academic freedom and one question about open searches’ pros and cons in the selection of future presidents.
• A request that, once an individual is hired, their responses to the four questions be made known to the entire college community.

As of May of 2021, the Whitman College Chapter of the AAUP has 62 dues-paying members, its largest known number of members since it founding in 1916.

The Whitman College Chapter of the AAUP continued to facilitate faculty education, discussions, and advocacy throughout the semester. A partial list of activities includes the following.

• • We provided forums for discussion of issues related to “Financial Sustainability Review” (FSR).
  • We generated questions for and intensively participated in the trustee-faculty forum about the FSR.
  • We collected and distributed testimonials about the importance of sabbatical leave to the excellence of teaching and scholarship at the college.
  • We joined and spoke at a student-organized protest of the FSR.
  • We advocated at faculty meetings for actions to develop and improve faculty-trustee relations.
  • We authored three resolutions that were passed by the faculty on April 14, 2021:
    • Advocacy for retaining provost (rather than trustee) control over each year’s initial NTT (non-tenure track) staffing plan, and for restoring multi-year contracts for NTT faculty.
    • Registration of opposition to the extended sabbatical timeline, and support for the model proposed by the FSR faculty representatives.
      • (The trustees decided to adopt a less generous policy for the timeline of sabbatical eligibility of tenured faculty members — one that had not been recommended by the “FSR” committee on academic affairs, whose members were unable to reach consensus in this matter. The faculty members of that committee submitted to the Board of Trustees a letter separate from the committee’s report, but that letter was not released to the rest of the faculty.)
    • Advocacy for an open search for the next college president.
  • Asked the faculty to consider a motion resisting trustee intervention in the process for selecting amongst sabbatical applications.
  • Participated in National Debt Reveal Day, together with 32 other colleges, universities, and educational organizations.
  • The chapter elected Associate Professor of Religion Lauren Osborne to become its new vice president.

• • The Whitman College Chapter of the AAUP discussed and endorsed the statement “Zoom and Academic Freedom in the Time of Pandemic” by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Due Process.
  • We advocated successfully for greater and individual faculty choice in determining the extent of online vs. in-person instruction in the Spring of 2021 semester.

In the Fall of 2021, the chapter’s president, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture Studies and Garrett Fellow, Lisa Uddin, was elected as one of the faculty’s representatives on the “Financial Sustainability Review” committees. Consequently, she transferred the chapter’s presidency to former Vice President Arielle Cooley, Associate Professor of Biology and Garrett Fellow.

In the Fall of 2020, in light of the rushed “Financial Sustainability Review” (FSR) initiated by the Board of Trustees, the Whitman College Chapter of the AAUP issued A Call to Action, asking the college’s president to:

• • Increase transparency about the college’s finances;
  • Inform and engage the faculty regarding ideas for major cuts before any decisions are made;
  • Commit publicly to following through with the recommendations of the FSR committees;
  • Provide a vigorous justification for a liberal arts education in today’s world.

(The college’s president did not respond affirmatively to this Call to Action and did not commit to following through with the FSR committees’ recommendations, nor did the Board of Trustees follow the recommendations with complete fidelity.)

On October 12, 2020, the Whitman College chapter of the AAUP issued this statement on the discontinuation of multi-year contracts for contingent faculty. From the statement: “We believe that the College’s decision to abandon established practice by eliminating multi-year contracts for qualified and essential contingent faculty, including athletic coaches is short-sighted at best.”