AAUP Recommended Principles & Practices to Guide Academy
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AAUP Recommended Principles & Practices to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships Purpose: To sustain and protect academic freedom, academic professionalism, research integrity and public trust Dedicated to the memory of Victor J. Stone (AAUP President 1982-1984), University of Illinois College of Law “To impart the results of their own and their fellow specialists’ investigations and reflection, both to students and to the general public, without fear or favor . requires (among other things) that the university teacher shall be exempt from any pecuniary motive or inducement to hold, or to express, any conclusion which is not the genuine and uncolored product of his own study or that of fellow specialists. Indeed, the proper fulfillment of the work of the professoriate requires that our universities shall be so free that no fair-minded person shall find any excuse for even a suspicion that the utterances of university teachers are shaped or restricted by the judgment, not of professional scholars, but of inexpert and possibly not wholly disinterested persons outside of their own ranks. To the degree that professional scholars, in the formation and promulgation of their opinions, are, or by the character of their tenure appear to be, subject to any motive other than their own scientific conscience and a desire for the respect of their fellow experts, to that degree the university teaching profession is corrupted; its proper influence upon public opinion is diminished, and vitiated; and society at large fails to get from its scholars, in an unadulterated form, the peculiar and necessary service which it is the office of the professional scholar to furnish.” “1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,” AAUP Policy Documents and Reports, Tenth Edition (Washington, DC: AAUP, 2006), pp. 294-95. © Copyright 2012 American Association of University Professors 1 Preface The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) hereby issues this comprehensive report, “Recommended Principles and Practices to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships,” for public comment. Responses may be directed to Greg Scholtz, director of the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance ([email protected]). After a review of the comments received, the report will be revised as appropriate and published in a paperbound edition. Work on this project has been funded by a bequest from the estate of Victor J. Stone, a professor in the College of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign who served as AAUP general counsel and from 1982 until 1984 as AAUP president, and by grants from the Open Society Foundations, the AAUP’s Academic Freedom Fund, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). Publication of the report is being supported by grants from a number of AAUP chapters and state conferences, a complete list of which will be published with the book. This is one of the longest reports the AAUP has ever produced. It deals with issues that make the news weekly and that critically impact higher education in the United States and across the world. The days when industry-funded research was concentrated in a limited number of universities have passed. Every type and size of institution now faces both the opportunities and the responsibilities associated with businesses-sponsored research relationships. The report opens with a summary of recommendations for principles that colleges and universities should adopt, as appropriate, in their governing and advisory documents and in their contracts with outside funders. The main body of the report follows, beginning with an overview of the history and current state of engagement between industry and the academy. The balance of the report details each of fifty-six recommendations and guidelines, offering not only rationales for them, but also documentation and qualifications. Those involved in reviewing, adopting, and implementing the recommendations should benefit from this more detailed information contained in the main report. Appendix A summarizes the sources for each of these 56 recommended principles, and notes which are closely drawn from previous recommendations issued by the AAUP and other professional associations, and which are new or adapted from other sources. The report urges giving faculty governing bodies greater authority over the principles and standards regulating outside funding, and over the disposition of inventions derived from faculty research, but the report is by no means exclusively an assertion of faculty rights. It specifies— and emphasizes—the responsibilities that must come with outside funding, including public disclosure of all financial conflicts of interest. Not all will readily embrace these responsibilities, but the time has surely come when every institution needs to debate and consider them. This report began with a 2010 decision by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to examine the issue. A small group met early in 2011 to draft a set of sample recommendations. The resulting discussion helped reveal the scope and challenges of the project. Jennifer Washburn, an investigative journalist familiar with the relevant literature, was invited to help prepare a full report in collaboration with the AAUP president. Valuable advice came from Ernst Benjamin, former AAUP General Secretary, and from AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Shared Governance. A draft was then sent for review and comment to three AAUP standing committees (Academic Freedom and Tenure, College and University 2 Governance, and Professional Ethics—chaired, respectively, by David Rabban, Larry Gerber, and Debra Nails) and to numerous knowledgeable faculty members, administrators, and professionals. A substantial packet of responses included comments from Marcia Angell (Medicine, Harvard University), Gerald Barnett (Research Technologies Enterprise Initiative), Eric Campbell (Medicine, Harvard University), Michael Davis (Philosophy, Illinois Institute of Technology), John R. Fuisz (The Fuisz-Kundu Group LLP), Larry Gerber (History, Auburn University), Gregory Girolami (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Stanton A. Glantz (Medicine, University of California at San Francisco), Claire Katz (Philosophy, Texas A&M University), Jonathan Knight (former head of the AAUP Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Shared Governance), Sheldon Krimsky (Urban and Environmental Policy, Tufts University), Russ Lea (Vice President for Research, University of South Alabama), Risa Lieberwitz (Labor and Employment Law, Cornell University), Gerald Markowitz (Public Health and American Social History, John Jay College of Justice), Debra Nails (Philosophy, Michigan State University), Richard Nelson (International Political Economy, Columbia University), Christopher Newfield (English, UC-Santa Barbara), David Rosner (History and Public Health, Columbia University), Donald Stein (Medicine, Emory University), and Stephen Wing (Epidemiology, North Carolina State University). Washburn and Nelson incorporated the responses as appropriate into a revised draft for the standing committees to review. The consultant readers are not, of course, responsible for the final recommendations, and providing their names here does not imply their endorsement of all of them, but thanks go to them for their serious, detailed, and immensely helpful engagement with the text. Jim Turk, the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, participates in meetings of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. CAUT is issuing a much condensed (and adapted) version of our recommendations at about the same time as we place our full report online for comment. Faculty in other countries may find them useful as well. Finally, with a project of this scope, we welcome the opportunity to recognize the critical help we have had from the AAUP’s national staff. Greg Scholtz helped us manage the approval process and our requests from the Academic Freedom Fund. Bob Kreiser’s wide knowledge of AAUP history gave us timely access to key documents. Mike Ferguson found copy editors and managed their work, while also providing cost estimates for the project. Ezra Deutsch-Feldman shepherded us through the complexities of handling such a long document. And we could never have managed this massive enterprise without Martin Snyder’s flawless political and practical wisdom at every stage of the process. Cary Nelson AAUP President, 2006-2012 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.......................................................................................................................pp. 2-3 GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS........................................pp. 7-9 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS………………………………………..…pp. 10-26 INTRODUCTION An Overview of the Benefits and Risks of Heightened Academic-Industry Engagement.....................................................................................................................pp. 27-104 • Why the AAUP is Issuing this Report • Balancing the University’s Diverse Missions • The Growth of University-Industry Engagement • What Accounts for Rising Levels of Academic-Industry Engagement? • Types of Academic-Industry Research Collaboration • The Benefits of Academic-Industry Engagement • The Risks Academic-Industry Engagement Poses (Risks 1-6) Part I. General Principles (1-7) Principles & Standards to Guide Academic-Industry Engagement University-Wide………………………………………………pp. 105-126 Principle 1: