AAUP Backpedals on Faculty Status of Librarians

AAUP has just released its new Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians, a new version of a similar statement drafted in 1973 and reaffirmed a couple of times since then. What I’d like to point out is that the new statement backpedals significantly on what it actually says about faculty status. The earlier statement said that AAUP considers academic librarians as faculty across the board, irrespective of how they are considered by their institutions, while the new statement says that faculty status of academic employees should depend upon the librarian’s function in teaching, research, and service at a given institution, with the institution being responsible for setting the specific criteria and procedures for according faculty status. In other words, AAUP has retracted its strong support for faculty status of librarians, stating only that, essentially, “librarians should have faculty status where they should have faculty status, according to their institutions.” It is pretty toothless now. I also note that there is no link provided to the earlier statement.