Roughly 40 AAUP MI Members Weighed in on Endorsing Candidate

Only about 40 Michigan members of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) attended a meeting last month during which they were polled on whether the national AAUP should endorse a political candidate. The meeting led to the national AAUP announcing last week what it says is its first-known national-level candidate endorsement.

AAUP national president Todd Wolfson told Inside Higher Ed last week that the AAUP polled its Michigan members before the group’s national council signed off on endorsing Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, set for Tuesday. Wolfson said roughly 80 percent of those voting favored making an endorsement, and about 97 percent specifically favored El-Sayed.

AAUP didn’t immediately provide Inside Higher Ed last week the number of people who voted. After Inside Higher Ed published its story on the endorsement—which fed continuing criticisms that AAUP has abandoned its historical status as a politically neutral arbiter of academic freedom and other faculty rights—a few AAUP members raised concerns about Wolfson’s characterization of the poll.

“My jaw dropped when I read that statement,” Evan Kutzler, an AAUP member in Michigan, wrote on LinkedIn. He said the July 14 meeting “included national officers, legal representation, chapter presidents, and then-AAUP members. The number of people on the Zoom call fluctuated, but there were about 40 people in attendance and fewer when we took an informal poll. I don’t mean 40 people from my department or college. I don’t mean 40 people from my AAUP chapter. I mean 40 people from Michigan and the national organization.”

“Wolfson is correct in the percentages,” Kutzler wrote, “but the raw vote would tell you how few people were pulled away from their summer lives to attend that meeting.”

AAUP national executive director Mia McIver told Inside Higher Ed on Sunday that about 40 Michigan AAUP members attended the “consultation call” with Michigan AAUP members during which the “advisory poll” was conducted. She said AAUP national invited all Michigan members to the July 14 meeting about a week ahead of time through a mass email, with follow-ups by campus arms. There are roughly 5,000 AAUP members in Michigan, AAUP spokesperson Kelly Benjamin said.

Terri Friedline, president of the AAUP chapter at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed that “for at least a few chapters, leadership was diligent in polling their membership in advance about the potential endorsement. And so, the scope of AAUP members giving their input wasn’t limited to attendance at the meeting.”

McIver said that, before the poll, El-Sayed had already been endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, which the “vast majority” of Michigan AAUP members are also part of. (AAUP includes both unionized and nonunionized campus arms, and its unionized campus arms are affiliated with AFT.)

“AAUP members had a voice in that process,” McIver said, adding that the state’s largest arm, at Wayne State University, had also already endorsed El-Sayed. She said there’s no statewide AAUP organization in Michigan, and that’s part of the reason why AAUP national made the endorsement.

“We began consideration of the race at the request of members in Michigan,” McIver said.

“There were multiple channels through which those members could make their voice heard, and, when we look at all of those opportunities together, we’re very confident that this does represent the will of the majority of AAUP members in Michigan,” she said. “And that is not to elide or marginalize dissenting voices, which are very important.”

Wolfson has defended the national AAUP’s endorsement on X, where many critics have attacked the decision.

“Apparently our first endorsement has upset some people,” Wolfson wrote on the social media site Friday. “Good. Higher ed, academic freedom, research, collective bargaining, and the idea of college as a public good are under attack. AAUP isn’t going to respond by pretending politics isn’t happening. We’re going to organize.”

On Sunday, he wrote “You clowns are right. Being quiet and neutral has worked so well during 55 years of state and federal divestment and the recent attacks from [Florida governor Ron] DeSantis & Trump which led to debt and contingency. Go ahead and lay down & claim neutrality, we are gonna fight. See ya later Chamberlin.” [sic]