June 20, 2024
Dear Ms. Milstein and the Barnard Board of Trustees,
We are following up on our last communication to the Board and our request to meet with you.
As you know, last semester the Barnard faculty decisively passed an unprecedented resolution of "no confidence" in President Laura Rosenbury. Subsequently, the Columbia School of Arts and Sciences also passed a no-confidence vote in President Shafik. These resolutions reflect the profound crisis of trust and leadership felt by many faculty and the urgent need for repair.
Two weeks ago, the trustees of Columbia University invited a group of Columbia professors who supported the no-confidence resolution—including members of the AAUP—to a two-hour listening session, the purpose of which was to hear from the Arts & Sciences faculty why they took the extraordinary step of expressing no confidence in their president.
The Barnard AAUP believes that Barnard faculty are equally deserving of an open line of communication to our trustees. We are therefore writing to you again to request similar listening sessions with us as well as with our colleagues on the FGP and with the Faculty Representatives to the Board. These conversations need to take place as soon as possible and certainly before the new semester begins.
We want to conclude by clarifying what the AAUP is and what our standing is in these matters. The AAUP is a national organization founded in 1915, in part by Columbia professor John Dewey. Its purpose is to “define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education.” The AAUP does not take political positions but rather defends certain foundational principles of higher education, specifically the rights of professors to academic freedom, freedom of expression, and shared faculty governance. To cite the website of the national organization:
The mission of the American Association of University Professors is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of . . . all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.
While our chapter is new, the AAUP has deep roots in the history of Barnard. The founder of Barnard’s original AAUP chapter in 1970, Robert McCaughey, taught for decades in the History Department and went on to serve in the Barnard administration as Dean of the Faculty; he is the author of histories of both Barnard and Columbia. The AAUP is thus associated with colleagues whose service to Barnard as both faculty and administrators stretches over decades.
At moments of crisis, the AAUP has served as an effective vehicle for defending principles and resolving conflicts. We hope it can do the same at the present moment.
We very much look forward to meeting you in the near future.
Fred Neuhouser for the Executive Committee of the Barnard AAUP
P.S. Our apologies to the trustees whose addresses are not included in this message. There is no longer a publicly available list of the Barnard trustees on the internet (in contrast to the Board of Trustees at Columbia), and it has been impossible to find addresses for many whom we know to be on the Board.