They Could Be Flying Machine Advocates: Academic Freedom and the Founding of the American Association of University Professors

The American Association of University Professors was founded in 1915. While the Association developed into the primary defender of academic freedom in the United States, that role was not the publicly-stated goal of the founders. In fact, two weeks before the founding meeting, Arthur Lovejoy published a letter to the editor in Science disclaiming that role for the Association because it had not found the support of the Committee on Organization as an immediate priority.  It was Edwin Seligman who proposed from the floor of the founding meeting that the AAUP take up the issue of academic freedom.  My paper will examine the debates about AAUP’s mandate in the light of a number of cases of dismissal of university and college faculty in the first decade of the 20^th century.  It will ask how and under what circumstances what is now the signature issue of AAUP was adopted, how it was defined and implemented in those years.