Release date: 4/19/06
For more information, contact:Robin Burns, (202) 737-5900
View the count.
Washington, D.C.— Cary Nelson, a well-known scholar-activist, has been elected president of the American Association of University Professors for a two-year term. Nelson is professor of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An author or editor of twenty-five books and the author of 150 articles, he has served on the AAUP's National Council for ten years, the last six as second vice president.
In such books as Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (1997), Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary for Higher Education (1999), and Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy (2004), the last two coauthored with Stephen Watt, Nelson has written widely on most of the major issues confronting the academy: academic freedom, collective bargaining, contingent labor, corporatization, globalization, the internet, political correctness, sexual harassment, and the relationship between teaching and research. He regularly lectures around the United States and abroad and is frequently interviewed about higher education.
Nelson’s campaign for the presidency mixed praise for the AAUP’s accomplishments with warnings that change is necessary if the AAUP is to reach its full potential. “The policy statements issued by our committees, the investigations we conduct, and the work of our national staff is of the highest caliber. But we must do a more effective job of communicating our accomplishments to the professoriate at large. We need to focus on our key missions, activate our membership, and maximize our impact,” Nelson says.
Nelson’s primary field of scholarship is modern American poetry. His books Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945 (1989) and Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left (2001) have been at the center of the effort to reform and expand the American poetry canon. But he has also been an academic activist for years, defending the rights of graduate students and part-time faculty, joining union rallies across the country. He has also served on the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association. Nelson is widely recognized as a frank and witty commentator on the politics of higher education. He is married to Paula A. Treichler, a University of Illinois faculty member internationally known for her work on AIDS.
Larry G. Gerber, professor of history at Auburn University, was re-elected first vice president and Jeffrey A. Butts, professor of biology at Appalachian State University, was re-elected secretary-treasurer, each for third terms. Estelle Gellman, professor of Educational Psychology at Hofstra University, was elected second vice president.
National Council Elections
The AAUP also elected new members to its national Council, the governing body of the Association. Council members serve for three-year terms. The members were elected from ten geographical districts representing colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
The forty-member Council meets twice a year to determine Association policy. Each year, a nominating committee selects two members per district to stand for election, and the membership within the district elects the members of Council. The new Council members with their affiliations and districts are listed below.
District I – Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah
Candace Kant, History, Community College of Southern Nevada
District II – Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wyoming
Donna L. Potts, English, Kansas State University
District III - Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin
Sheila Teahan, English, Michigan State University
District IV - Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri
Patricia Simpson, Human Resources/Employment Relations, Loyola University Chicago
District V - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virgin Islands, West Virginia
Bob Glenn, Communications, University of Tennessee , Knoxville
District VI - Canada, Foreign, Guam, Ohio
Rodger Govea, Political Science, Cleveland State University ( Ohio )
District VII - New Jersey
Karen Thompson, English, Rutgers University
District VIII – New York
Lenore Beaky, English, LaGuardia Community College
District IX - Connecticut , Maine , Massachusetts , New Hampshire, Rhode Island , Vermont
Arlene Bielefield, Library Science, Southern Connecticut State University
District X - Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia
Adolph L. Reed, Jr., Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, and standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has about 45,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.