The Study On American Association Of University Professors

Academic freedom has been a working and learning environment what the scholars pursue to have. The universities play a special role as education research institutions in today's society. But the pressure comes from the religion, the plutocrat and the polity sphere always impact its development. A malformation academic environment is bound to affect the progress of society and lead to the country backward. Therefore, how to keep the independence of academic institutions, and prevent the scholar in teaching and researching from any outside interference becomes a main task in academia. Safeguarding academic freedom and the academic rights has been a topic that all circles of community are concerned about.American academic freedom has been influencing the mainstream of academic freedom in the contemporary world. American university teachers'academic freedom is closely linked to their occupation safety. A series of ideas and principles that AAUP advocated to enhance academic freedom, the tenure system it established, as well as the criterion and standard it carried out since it came into existence,has been advocating and complying by not only American but even the world academia.The Academic Association of University professor was founded in 1915 to safeguard academic freedom and teachers'right. It issued the"Declaration of the Academic Freedom"soon after its foundation, which clearly put forward the principle of academic freedom protection, and established the tenure system. After the World War II, its weakness as a nongovernmental group exposed, and its limitations of the academic freedom protection in the face of powerful political forces made the association run bad. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some teacher groups were able to organize labor unions,especially the AFT and the NEA, which forced the union issue for the AAUP. The rush of unionization in the early 1970s sustained the issue for the AAUP. Feeling somewhat embattled, the AAUP leadership decided using the collective bargaining tool to protect teachers'right. Since the 1980s, many colleges and universities called for post-tenure. Under the pressure of increasingly strong voice that against tenure, and also in order to improve teachers working activities, AAUP adjusted its policy of tenure, but it's no doubt that AAUP is the firm defender and the best interpreter of the tenure.Since the 1990s, AAUP developed gradually and steadily. It not only concerned about the teachers'academic freedom, tenure, university governance, treatment and collective bargaining, but also took an active interest in a wider teaching, learning and researching field. Determining the meaning of academic freedom, identifying the main areas for different tasks, as well as timely adjusting the policies by internal and external conflicts in different periods, all these built up its living philosophy that can ensure its life and help it to keep independence to complete the mission.Including the introduction and the conclusion, this thesis has six parts. The first part is the introduction which briefly describes the article's background and significance of the study, summarizes general study situation about the field, and explains the study methods adopted in this paper. The main research on AAUP in it is divided into four parts:Part I explores AAUP's organization history, present organization situation and its characteristics. Then part II analyzes the association's status, including its stable organizational structure, rational operation and its characteristics. All these matters keep its success in protecting teachers'rights in contemporary society when academic freedom facing much more pressure. And this part also analyzes its realistic challenge behind a series of achievements, with a view to providing a reliable theoretical basis and practical experience to promote China's academic career, to ensure healthy development of higher education. The status of AAUP reveals the relation between teachers'rights and universities, and between government and other teachers'organization. So, part IV analyzes AAUP's status in the hope of giving us some experience of dealing with these relationships. And this part also concludes its achievements from four aspects. Owing to excessive government intervention, Chinese universities lack autonomy. The spirit of academic freedom cannot be embodied and academic freedom value devalues. Excessive administrative power restricts teachers'academic freedom and their participation in shared governance. The faultiness of appointment system and protection mechanism, make the teaching profession facing a threat. On protecting Chinese teachers'academic rights, AAUP is undoubtedly a useful research material. Its achievements and the causes will provide us some beneficial reassert value. To apply AAUP's experience, we should accelerate the legislation about academic freedom, speed up institutional innovation, establish mutual understandings between faculty and administrative and enhance teachers'awareness of protecting their own right.