American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Georgia President Matthew Boedy discussed the unionization of professors at an event titled “Why Students Should Support Faculty Organizing” on April 2 in Oxford College’s Williams Hall.
AAUP is a nonprofit association focused on protecting the economic security of individuals involved in teaching and research in higher education. As an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, Boedy stated that faculty rights are important to university students. He explained that teachers’ working conditions directly inform students’ learning conditions.
“Faculty organizing represents all types of faculties in all types of teaching situations,” Boedy said. “We are interested in you learning a lot, and we’re interested in then having every faculty decide for themselves what it is they want to teach.”
Jose Perez Luna (25Ox), who attended the event, resonated with Boedy’s message.
“Students should care about the faculty, and obviously, supporting faculty organizing is the best way to do it,” Perez Luna said.
Currently, Georgia law prohibits public workers, such as employees of public universities, from using collective bargaining and the right to strike. Boedy believes that the preservation and expansion of academic freedom, particularly through tenure, is the most crucial issue in protecting faculty working conditions. He added that tenure protects professors from politically motivated firings.
“Tenure is due process rights,” Boedy said. “Rights you should have, as any worker, to protect what it is you do. But higher education is special, unique. That is, not a lot of other workers outside of higher education have that.”
When asked what students could do to assist faculty organizing efforts, Boedy responded that students should organize based on where their tuition money goes.
“The student government association of any university … takes fees from you and then doles it out to other groups,” Boedy said. “If you haven’t ever been to a student government meeting, they very much fight over the doling out of that money. You should do that as well with your tuition.”
Boedy, who became AAUP president in February 2020, said he had very little involvement with unions for most of his life. He joined AAUP in 2016 because the Georgia state senate proposed a bill permitting concealed carry on college campuses.
“I did that because of my personal animus or bias against guns, but I also did that because my other faculty members of the college were concerned about guns on campus,” Boedy said. “That issue moved me from my individual benefit, or my individual care or my individual opinion to organizing other people.”
In September 2021, Georgia removed its mask mandate for public universities, prompting a week-long protest from Boedy and his colleagues. The following month, Georgia threatened to cut tenure for university professors.
“I had … to figure out what it is that I was supposed to be doing as a representative of a group of professors, learn how to advocate for my profession because my profession has been, if you will, literally under attack,” Boedy said.
Boedy ended his speech with a call to action.
“I’m asking you to defend the profession of teaching, but I’m also asking you to consider yourself as a member of the profession,” Boedy said. “If you’re lucky enough to get employed after graduating from a great school like Emory, which you probably will be, to consider yourself to be a professional and then to organize other professionals in your profession. And as a professional, that is my profession to you.”
Associate Professor of Sociology Deric Shannon expressed appreciation for Boedy’s talk.
“Faculty organizing benefits everybody in the University community,” Shannon said. “Dr. Boedy made a good case for that.”
