American Association of University Professors

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership is about 47,000, with over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations.

The AAUP's stated mission is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good. Founded in 1915 by Arthur O. Lovejoy and John Dewey, the AAUP has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in the country's colleges and universities. Rudy Fichtenbaum is the current president.

Among the events that led to its founding was the dismissal of eugenicist, economics professor and sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross from Stanford University. Ross' work criticizing the employment of Chinese laborers by the Southern Pacific Railroad, run by Stanford's founder Leland Stanford, led Leland's widow Jane Stanford to intervene and eventually, over the objections of the president and the faculty, succeed in getting Ross dismissed.

As the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) details the history of their policy on academic freedom and tenure, the association maintains that there "are still people who want to control what professors teach and write." The AAUP's "Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure" is the definitive articulation of these principles and practices, and is widely accepted throughout the academic community. The association's procedures ensuring academic due process remain the model for professional employment practices on campuses throughout the country.