In January, NCA signed on to a statement from the American Council of Learned Societies urging the Kansas Board of Regents “to withdraw its endorsement of the proposed policy to ease the path to suspending, dismissing, or terminating employees, including tenured faculty members, without undertaking the processes of formally declaring a financial emergency.” The statement reads, in part, “Precisely because financial pressure can lead to shortsighted decisions with the potential to do irreversible damage to institutions and to current and future generations of students, the preservation of the established process of tenure except in thoroughly documented cases of the deepest financial exigency has been long upheld by US colleges and universities.”
In March, NCA signed on to a letter from the American Council of Learned Societies urging Iowa lawmakers to vote against two bills that would remove tenure status and discontinue tenure at three Iowa universities. The letter reads, in part, “Knowledge is crucial to an educated citizenry. It needs strong defenses. Removing tenure in Iowa would undermine research and irrevocably damage the reputation of its schools, making it difficult for them to recruit students and faculty around the world.”
Also, in March, NCA signed on to a statement from the American Council of Learned Societies condemning anti-Asian violence. The statement reads, in part, “We are reminded by the horrific events in Georgia this week and increased acts of violence over this past year linked to the COVID-19 pandemic of the deep prejudices affecting Asians in this country. These and other attacks against the Asian-American community represent the latest chapter in our history of xenophobia, which tends to flare during times of crisis.” This statement is also published in NCA’s Anti-Racism Resource Bank.
Full statements and letters for these and other actions can be found on the public policy page.