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THE AMERICAN Association of University Professors censured the administrations of two institudons this month for violating the tenets of academic freedom and tenure, sanctioned another for abusing the principles of shared governance, and gave a fourth institution a one-year reprieve.
Two institutions made their way off the association's blacklists.
At its 86th annual meeting, the association voted unanimously to add Albertus Magnus College and the University of Central Arkansas to its list of administrations censured for academic-- freedom violations. In an unusual move, the association voted to give McP Hahnemann School of Medicine another year to clean up its act.
After 16 years on the list, the Illinois College of Optometry, made its way off-the only institution to be removed from the censure list at this year's meeting. That leaves 51 institutions on the blacklist, which the association has been keeping since 1936.
Much more recently, the association began a second blacklist for administrations found to have infringed on shared governance. This month, the association unanimously voted to add Miami-Dade Community College to that list and to drop Francis Marion University. The exchange leaves three institutions on the governance-sanctions list.
Here are summaries of the cases:
Albertus Magnus College
The association censured Albertus Magnus after investigators for the A.A.U.P.'S Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, known as Committee A,concluded that administrators at the Roman Catholic College had violated the due-process rights of a gay faculty member when it dismissed him in 1997 (The Chronicle, February 11, 2000).
The case involved Michael J. Hartwig, who was then a nontenured associate professor of philosophy and religious studies. An ordained priest who describes himself as "on leave" from the ministry, Mr. Hartwig was dismissed in a dispute over whether he had misrepresented his status as a priest. But the association found that the college's president had been concerned about the professor's teaching and his research on sexual ethics.
"The president denied that the professor's being openly gay had influenced her decisions," said Joan Wallach Scott, a historian at the Institute for...