AAUP Election Results

Dear AAUP Member:

Rudy Fichtenbaum, a professor of economics at Wright State University since 1980, has been elected president of the AAUP. Fichtenbaum has a PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia and has authored more than forty-five articles and book chapters, dealing primarily with race and sex discrimination, changes in income distribution, the impact of unions on wages and benefits, and the effect of occupational structure on earnings. He served twice as faculty president (1990–91 and 1996–97) and in 1997–98 helped organize the faculty at Wright State into a union. He helped lead the fight against SB 5 at Wright State and throughout Ohio, testifying before house and senate committees and speaking at several rallies.

Fichtenbaum has also served in a number of leadership positions within the state and national AAUP, including as president of the Ohio AAUP conference, as an AAUP national Council member, and on the executive committee of the AAUP’s Collective Bargaining Congress (CBC). He currently serves as a Council member, as treasurer of the CBC, and on the investment and audit committees of the AAUP.

Fichtenbaum issued a statement in response to his election, which said, in part:

It is a great honor to have been elected to be the 50th President of the American Association of University Professors. I ran as part of a slate of candidates Organizing for Change.

We believe that higher education in general and the AAUP in particular stand at a critical crossroads. Everywhere our profession and its values are under assault. Attacks on collective bargaining rights and shared governance, the abuse of non-tenure track faculty (both full-time and part-time) and consequent erosion of tenure, the misplaced priorities of politicians and many university leaders, and assaults on the free expression rights of both faculty and students are increasing. To meet these challenges faculty in general and the AAUP in particular must move beyond our traditional modes of defense, invaluable as these are.

The current crisis calls on us to shift our focus and place our highest priority on organizing to defend our profession and genuinely reform higher education. The AAUP needs to become a more powerful, articulate, and energetic force committed to organizing and mobilizing faculty in a broad variety of ways to fight for our profession. (Read the whole statement on the AAUP website.)

• First vice president: Henry “Hank” Reichman (History, California State University, East Bay). A scholar of Russian and Soviet history, Reichman has served as a chapter officer and since 2003 on the collective bargaining team of the California Faculty Association, an AAUP affiliate representing over 20,000 faculty in the California State University system. He served three terms as chair of his campus academic senate and nine years on the CSU system academic senate and has been editor of the American Library Association's Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom since 1982. He was elected to the AAUP Council and to the Executive Committee in 2011.
• Second vice president: Susan Michalczyk (Honors Program, Boston College). Michalczyk is a full-time adjunct associate professor and assistant director of the A&S Honors Program at Boston College. She was a founding member of the Boston College AAUP chapter , which in 2010 received the AAUP’s Konheim Award in recognition of its hard work and achievements. She has recently made presentations at the AAUP Shared Governance Conference and Summer Institutes as well as at events organized by the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor and the New Faculty Majority.
• Secretary-treasurer: Michele Ganon (Accounting, Western Connecticut State University). Ganon has been active in the AAUP since 2001, serving as chapter president and in a number of other roles on the local level. She is licensed to practice as a CPA in New York State and possesses expertise in cost management and strategic planning.