AAUP Statement on Teaching of Race, Sex, or Religion
For more than a century, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has believed that institutions of higher education should function as sites of unfettered scholarly inquiry and teaching and has worked to preserve these freedoms. The recent attempts to abolish or curtail teaching about the role of race, sex, or religion and the repercussions of racism and slavery represent the latest example of attempts to curtail scholarly inquiry and teaching. These recent efforts to allow political interests to determine the academic content that faculty can and cannot teach or the scholarly areas they can or cannot research or study would prevent colleges and universities from fulfilling their teaching and research missions. Such actions also severely violate both academic freedom, the cornerstone of American higher education, and the faculty’s primary role in institutional decision-making and shared governance. The Auburn chapter of AAUP condemns in the strongest possible terms any actions to ban, limit, or distort the teaching of so-called divisive concepts and supports the national organization’s statement on these efforts.
