MU-AAUP MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

If you have an announcement you’d like to be included in this newsletter or want to change your email address, please send it to aaup.mizzou@gmail.com.

SEPTEMBER 2026

Thank you

• We appreciate those who took time to fill out our survey. 

• Respondents appreciate their colleagues, health care and retirement benefits, and the academic freedom they do have, but are concerned about attacks on academic freedom, poor leadership, increasing administrative burdens, and mis/overuse of AI. 

• Respondents asked our AAUP chapter to focus on mis/over-use of AI, workers’ rights, including faculty of all statuses, national and local politics, and unionization. 

• Suggestions included greater publicity, various social events, a reading group, an educational event about academic freedom, and a set of one-act plays! 

Upcoming in our AAUP Chapter

• We are planning a social event for Friday October 9th at 5 pm in Strickland 325. Come and share what's on your mind while enjoying beverages and snacks with AAUP compatriots!

ICYMI 

• We released a statement, an Affirmation of Academic Freedom in response to recent events on our campus. We sent it to The Missourian and Faculty Council.

Our Work in National Context

• AAUP has released a statement called “Why Academic Freedom Matters Now,” in which they state, “If the disciplinary authority of the faculty is subordinated to the political interests of external actors or eroded from within by calls for the policing of certain disciplines by those without expertise in those fields, students will lose their freedom to learn and be denied access to the range of knowledge they will need to suc­ceed in life while society will be denied its full capacity to confront its challenges, present and future.”

Get Involved

• Join AAUP's national organization

• Get this newsletter regularly (if it was forwarded to you) by emailing aaup.mizzou@gmail.com (this also works for general inquiries)

• Follow us on Facebook @AAUPatMU 

Sincerely,

Mizzou AAUP Leadership

President: Steve Karian

Vice President: Noël Kopriva

Secretary: Rose Metro

Treasurer: Jim Van Dyke 

Executive Committee: Sam Cohen, Noah Heringman, Rabia Gregory, Cristina Mislán, Chuck Munter, Srirupa Prasad