AAUP Foundation

Welcome to the AAUP Foundation

The AAUP Foundation is the charitable arm of the AAUP enterprise. With the AAUP (a professional association), it shares a commitment to academic freedom and shared governance, defines fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and ensures higher education’s contribution to the common good.

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Agents of Change

Agents of Change, a documentary exploring the legacy of 1960s campus activism that resulted in the creation of black and ethnic studies programs, is available for streaming online. The Foundation's Academic Freedom Fund provided support for production of the film and for outreach to AAUP chapters and conferences seeking to schedule screenings of the film.

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Foundation Grant Opportunities

Do you need financial support for a legal case implicating rights of national significance in higher education? Are you developing a project that advances academic freedom or illuminates its role in a democratic society? The AAUP Foundation welcomes inquiries and applications for our quarterly grant deadlines on March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31.

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A Generous Grant to Support Essential Work

The AAUP Foundation is excited to announce that it has been awarded a $150,000 three-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to fund costs associated with fall meetings and reports for the AAUP’s standing Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

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Featured Grant Protecting Governance The AAUP Foundation provided financial support for the AAUP’s investigation of the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's the broadest investigation the AAUP has conducted since its 1956 report on attacks on academic freedom at eighteen institutions during the McCarthy era. Read More » Featured Grant Supporting Faculty An Academic Freedom Fund grant will support ongoing research for Isaac Kamola's Faculty First Responders project. Survey data related to Kamola's research on the impact of strategic targeting by conservative "watchdog" Campus Reform of faculty members, particularly those working on topics related to race, was the focus of a spring 2021 Academe data snapshot. Read More »		Featured Programs Academic Freedom The AAUP Foundation supports projects that safeguard academic freedom to encourage free inquiry, promote the expansion of knowledge, and create an environment in which learning and research can flourish, thereby enhancing the quality of higher education and benefiting society. Read More » Legal Defense The AAUP Foundation supports faculty members in cases at the trial and appellate levels that implicate important legal rights, involve legal issues of national significance in higher education, and affect the careers of academics. Read More »

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