by Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn
August 13, 2016
- Founding and early decades (1916-1949)
- “The Tenure War” (1949-1952)
- The aftermath of “The Tenure War”
- Academic freedom, faculty compensation, and sabbaticals (1952-1978)
- >> Reviving the Whitman chapter (2016-present)
Exactly one hundred years after the first Whitman College faculty members were nominated for membership in the American Association of University Professors, the holder of an endowed chair named in honor of Baker Ferguson convened a meeting of current AAUP members in order to discuss revival of the campus chapter. On March 10, 2016, new bylaws for the chapter were formally adopted and officers, including Andrea Dobson as president, Lynn Sharp as vice-president, and Timothy Kaufman-Osborn as secretary-treasurer, were elected.
In reconstituting the chapter, its members carry on a tradition and participate in an enterprise that has included many of Whitman most esteemed faculty since the College’s founding. A very partial list of those involved in the chapter during the twentieth century includes William Lyman, Walter Bratton, Howard Brode, Louis Anderson, Elle Ravasse, Chester Maxey, Richard Eels, G. Thomas Edwards, George Ball, David Stevens, Thomas Howells, Robert Fluno, Patrick Tyson, Walter Weingart, Ely Chertok, Art Rempel, Jack Freimann, Stanley Plummer, Robert Whitner, Fred Santler, Richard Stuart, Deborah DuNann Winter, Kate Bracher, and many others. Whatever their disciplinary or other differences, what joined these faculty members to one another as well as to the chapter’s present members is shared adherence to the mission of the American Association of University Professors:
The mission of the American Association of University Professors is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post‐doctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good.