The local chapter of the American Association of University Professors is requesting that the faculty senate formally discuss free speech issues resulting from the controversy surrounding Carrie Chapman Catt Hall.

A letter from Iowa State alumnus Sharon Rodine stated that Derrick Rollins, associate professor of chemical engineering and adviser on minority affairs to President Martin Jischke, should be fired because he publicly disagreed with university policy.

“That’s a very direct threat on everybody’s right to express themselves,” said Mack Shelley, professor of political science and the local AAUP president.

“It’s a pure civil liberties, pure free speech, first amendment kind of issue,” he said.

Shelley said beyond the constitutional point, it also goes to the heart of what AAUP represents, which is protecting faculty rights to debate openly and express themselves as part of what tenure is supposed to provide.

“But whether you’ve got tenure or not, you should still be able to say what you want without retaliation,” he said.

AAUP, a faculty advocacy organization with nearly 44,000 members nationwide, “… has a strong commitment to protecting tenure and academic freedom,” Shelley said.

Shelley, however, believes the end of tenure is very likely. “In fact, the first clear cut signs of that is a document that provides for post-tenure review.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but if there’s implicitly a threat of being terminated from your position, then that certainly does destroy what tenure implies,” Shelley said.

Shelley said the threat to abolish tenure at the University of Minnesota is much more serious than what’s happening at ISU.

“The End of Tenure” is the title of a future general university forum being planned by AAUP.

“I don’t know whether to put a question mark at the end of that [title] or just leave it as a declarative statement,” Shelley said.

Joanna Courteau, professor of foreign languages, serves as chair of the statewide AAUP chapter Committee W. “This new committee has just been formed to help women with such issues as tenure and with such issues as sexual harassment,” Courteau said.

Courteau also served on a national AAUP committee for temporary appointments. “That has a lot to do with Committee W also, because a lot of women are on temporary appointments,” she said.

“One of the things that we have tried to do is get equal conditions for people on temporary appointments and make sure that if people are renewed indefinitely, that they then be tenured,” she said.

At ISU there is a problem right now because there are people who have been temporary faculty for many years, Courteau said. “Then they were given continuing adjunct appointments…but they don’t have tenure.”

She said more often than not, they’re not given the opportunity to advance.

“The only way to protect academic freedom is to have tenure,” Courteau said. “When a person has tenure they can only be dismissed for cause, or financial exigencies.”

The ISU Chapter and Iowa Conference have a new web site that provides a number of links to other sites, including the University of Minnesota. The URL is: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~aaup/