Although KSUFA receives surprisingly little directly from AAUP national apart from a brand name, there is value in that brand. AAUP is widely known and respected in academia and beyond as an organization committed to defending academic freedom, protecting tenure, defending faculty governance, and more generally promoting the interests of faculty and institutions of higher education. Were we to disaffiliate, KSUFA would have to find another way to continue to support these activities on a national level.
Given that AAUP national and Ohio Conference AAUP (OCAAUP) are a package deal, we would also lose our affiliation with OCAAUP. We, like all Ohio faculty, benefit greatly from the lobbying power of OCAAUP. They were instrumental in the 2011 fight against SB 5 – a law that would have completely eliminated our collective bargaining rights – and have played an important role in the recent fight against SB 83. We expect them to play a similarly important role in the upcoming fight against the successor to SB 83 (SB 1 / HB 6). Were we to disaffiliate from AAUP, KSUFA would have to find another way to support the state level activities of OCAAUP.
A more detailed answer question can be found in Vol. 3: The pros and cons of disaffiliating from AAUP of the “Our Kent State Faculty Union and AAUP” series.
