AAUP INVESTIGATES KEUKA COLLEGE, CANISIUS COLLEGE, AND MEDAILLE COLLEGE

Although Keuka College president has defended the recent “mass firing” decision, the AAUP has taken the position that an investigation is warranted. In fact, the AAUP will be investigating Keuka and six other colleges, including Canisius College and Medaille College, which are both in Buffalo, due to the “crisis in academic governance” over COVID-19. “Since March, the AAUP has received numerous complaints from faculty members detailing unilateral actions taken by their governing boards and administrations to dictate how courses are taught, to suspend key institutional regulations, to reduce and close departments and majors, to compel faculty members to teach in person, and to lay off long-serving faculty members,” Gregory Scholtz, director of the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance, said in a press release. While “the Keuka College Board of Trustees and administration decided that the situation was so poor that they were waiving the faculty handbook, including (and especially) those sections pertinent to tenture and senority,” aparently “the financial situation was not severe enough…to prevent the college from hiring a new administrator immediately after faculty were fired.” We are left wondering how fewer faculty and more administrators allign with a statement made by Board of Trustees chair Aqua Porter, e.g. “Our first and foremost obligation is to our students and the college community at large.”