Resolution Honoring Jordan E. Kurland on His Fifty Years of Service as a Member of the AAUP's Professional Staff

Associate General Secretary Jordan E. Kurland joined the Association's staff on June 16, 1965, having taken a leave of absence from his tenured appointment at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The year 2015 thus marks not only the AAUP's centennial but also Jordan's fiftieth anniversary as a member of the Association's professional staff.

For most of that half century up to the present, he has presided over the Association's major case work in academic freedom and tenure, despite having officially stepped down fifteen years ago as director of staff for Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

He has a role in more than 90 percent of the case investigations conducted in the Association's history, among them the 2007 investigation of five New Orleans universities after Hurricane Katrina, a major undertaking for which he was the responsible staff member. He has toiled incessantly to accomplish censure removal at scores of institutions, including all four of the universities censured as a result of the Katrina investigation and, at this annual meeting, the thirty-three-year-old censure at Yeshiva University.

He has been instrumental in maintaining the excellence that has characterized AAUP policy statements and reports on academic freedom, tenure, and governance, notably key sections of the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which have been widely adopted in American higher education.

He has carried out these responsibilities with relentless dedication, zeal, and even joy, seeking no recognition for himself and putting to good use his powerful intellect, nearly photographic memory, remarkable creativity and flexibility, pointed eloquence, keen editorial skills, and encyclopedic knowledge of the AAUP's history.

He has gained the affection, respect, and admiration of members of the AAUP's staff and leadership with whom he has worked closely over the years-including many whom he mentored.

During the past fifty years, Jordan has contributed, quietly and behind the scenes, more than any other individual to the AAUP's core endeavor of developing and implementing recommended standards on academic freedom, tenure, and governance.

The American Association of University Professors therefore takes great pleasure in honoring Jordan E. Kurland for his fifty years of service on the Association's professional staff and, in particular, for his unrivalled contribution during the preceding half century to the Association's historic mission of advancing the "standards, ideals, and welfare of the profession."