UNC Charlotte AAUP Mission Statement
The mission of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post‐doctoral fellows, and 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.
UNC Charlotte AAUP Chapter Memos
UNC Charlotte AAUP Chapter Meetings
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Please email aaup.uncc@gmail.com for information on future meetings.
UNC Charlotte AAUP Initiatives
Living Wage
to promote the economic security and rights of faculty, graduate students, staff, and hourly workers, all of whom are essential to the university
Shared Governance
to preserve higher education’s core mission and values through genuine shared governance
Academic Freedom
to protect academic freedom for the purpose of ensuring the university's mission to enhance the common good
Resisting corporatization
to support educators, not corporate leaders, in guiding the UNC system and its campuses
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2025 News
Victory at Ohio University!
After months of delays, negotiations, and one-on-one engagement, faculty at Ohio University won a decisive victory on Monday as an overwhelming majority voted YES to being represented in collective bargaining by the United Academics of Ohio University, AAUP/AFT.
AAUP, Allies Sue over Trump Policy of Arresting and Threatening to Deport Students and Faculty for Lawful Speech
The national AAUP; chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU; and the Middle East Studies Association today filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from carrying out large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty members who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other protected First Amendment activities.
Faculty Unions Sue Trump Administration: No Halting Science Research to Suppress Speech
The AAUP and the AFT today sued the Trump administration on behalf of our members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research in an attempt to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. While the Trump administration has been slashing funding since its first days in office, this move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning
Educators and Unions Unite to Challenge Trump Attempt to Dismantle Department of Ed
Today, the AAUP and a coalition including educators, school districts, and unions filed a legal action against the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education and mass firings that will decimate the crucial services the department provides to every American. This lawsuit is the first filed since President Trump’s executive order attempting to shutter the department.
Joint Statement of AAUP Chapters Regarding the Ongoing Crisis at Columbia University
A joint statement from AAUP chapters condemning the impoundment of $400 million in research funds and ICE's targeting of Columbia students and alumni involved in pro-Palestine protests.
Cowardice and Capitulation: Columbia Has Sacrificed Its Own Students to Authoritarianism
The AAUP condemns in the strongest possible terms any university that would sacrifice its own students to the demands of an authoritarian government. Columbia University’s decision to punish students with multiyear suspensions, degree revocations, and expulsions is an outrageous assault on freedom of speech, student and faculty safety, shared governance, and free inquiry and thought.
AAUP Condemns Trump Administration’s Punitive Weaponization of Federal Grant Funding at Columbia
The Trump administration has taken the unprecedented move of cancelling $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University in alleged response to “inaction by Columbia’s administration on antisemitism.” This heavy-handed partisan intrusion into Columbia’s academic, research, and health care operations will damage students’ education, stop progress toward lifesaving biomedical therapies, and harm patients being treated in Columbia’s hospitals. As we are seeing with the Trump administration's reckless cuts to NIH research funding, the result of this defunding will cause real harm to everyday Americans. Trump’s cuts to biomedical research kill.
Dismantling the Department of Education Would Hasten Us into a New Dark Age
The department has played a crucial role in the pathway to higher education for millions of Americans by providing and administering student loans, grants, and work-study programs. Without it, access to education for working class Americans will decrease. Funding for college education will be stripped away and programs for students with disabilities and students living in poverty will be eviscerated. Enforcement of civil rights laws against race- or sex-based discrimination in higher education will disappear.
Threats to Student Protest Are Antithetical to the Mission of Higher Education
The AAUP defends the right to free speech and peaceful protest on college and university campuses, a time-honored tradition protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Donald Trump’s unprecedented threats to expel and arrest protesters and end federal funding to colleges and universities that allow student protest have all the markings of a dictator. Such threats to punish students for protected speech are antithetical to democracy and to the aims of higher education.
Remembering Jeffrey A. Butts
Jeffrey A. Butts, AAUP secretary-treasurer from 2002 to 2008, died on February 19 in Boone, North Carolina. He was seventy-seven years old. After becoming an AAUP member in 1977, Jeff immediately embarked on a long career of service to the Association on the local, state, and national levels. He was chapter president at UNC–Charlotte and at Appalachian State, among other roles; he held numerous offices in the North Carolina AAUP state conference, including two terms as president; and he undertook a dozen or so national roles besides that of secretary-treasurer, including chair of the Assembly of State Conferences, national Council member, member of the Council executive committee, and first vice president.