Delegates attending the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) annual meeting last weekend voted to place Stillman College on its censure list after the organization concluded that the college violated the organization’s rules on academic freedom and tenure.
The June 14 censure stems from the April 2008 dismissal of Ekow Hayford, a terminated business professor at the Tuscaloosa, Ala.–based historically Black college. A detailed account of the events and the AAUP’s findings were summarized in “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Stillman College,” released by an AAUP investigating committee in the spring.
During its 95th annual meeting, which was held in Washington, D.C., the AAUP, a national advocacy organization for college professors, also placed North Idaho College, Nicholls State University (La.), and Cedarville University (Ohio) on its censure list while voting to remove the University of New Haven from the list. The organization also began taking preliminary steps to remove Tulane University from the list.
The four institutions have undergone censure because of improper, unfair, or unexplained termination or dismissal of tenure and non-tenure professors. AAUP censures schools to inform the academic community that a particular college or university administration abandoned principles of academic freedom and tenure as defined by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
The eight-page report concluded that the Stillman administration dismissed the AAUP’s “basic requisites of academic due process” by not providing Hayford with a list of charges and by not giving him the opportunity to defend himself before a group of faculty peers.
A draft of the report was sent to Stillman administrators before its publication. The college responded by saying the AAUP’s account contained unsupported claims and assumptions. Walvid D. King Sr., associate vice president for advancement at Stillman, told Diverse that the entire situation was just causing “unnecessary havoc.”
“We really did not need this type of distraction,” King said. “It’s been drawn out too long, and we really just want it to go away.”
