The American Association of University Professors issued a statement today backing its University of Washington affiliate's calls for that institution's provost, Phyllis Wise, to resign from the Board of Directors at Nike. The national AAUP's statement disputes Ms. Wise's assertion that she can ethically hold the Nike board position by recusing herself from the board's discussions of Nike's contract to provide her university with athletics gear. The statement also expresses concern that her position on the board will have a chilling effect on faculty research on Nike. Ms. Wise has argued that serving on Nike's board will enable her to bring about positive change at the corporation.

The American Association of University Professors announced on Friday that its general secretary, Gary Rhoades, has authorized an investigation of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute over issues of shared governance. The group says the investigation by a panel of its own members will focus on the suspension of Rensselaer's faculty senate. The office of Rensselaer's top-paid president, Shirley Ann Jackson, suspended the faculty senate there in 2007, and it has not met since.

The acclaimed historian John Hope Franklin was closely scrutinized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover, according to a report on TPMMuckraker, a blog published by Talking Points Memo. The blog, which obtained the FBI's file on Mr. Franklin through the Freedom of Information Act, says much of the agency's suspicion of him stemmed from his opposition to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his support for W.E.B. Du Bois, who joined the Communist Party late in life. The agency's investigations of Mr. Franklin, who died in March, produced little more than statements of praise by those who knew him.

A Florida judge has declared that Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford University professor of the history of science and prominent critic of the tobacco industry, engaged in "appalling" behavior in trying to get University of Florida faculty members to pressure graduate students there to stop working as paid researchers for an expert witness for tobacco companies. But Judge William A. Parsons, of the state circuit court for Volusia County, denied a request from tobacco-company lawyers to preclude Mr. Proctor from testifying in a health-damages lawsuit pending before him, saying that the students were not working for an expert witness in that particular case and it would be difficult to prove the companies' charge that Mr. Proctor's conduct amounted to illegal witness tampering or harassment. Mr. Proctor has described the allegations as part of a tobacco-industry effort to silence him.

The New School's unionized part-time faculty members unanimously voted today to ratify a new contract that, for the first time, gives them the right to take leave for birth, adoption, or the care of a sick child. Part-time faculty members generally do not qualify for such leave under the Family Medical Leave Act because they do not work enough hours at a given college to be covered by that federal law. The new contract for the New School's part-time faculty members, who belong to United Auto Workers Local 7902, also gives them a greater say in curriculum decisions and allows them to maintain their health benefits when their classes are canceled for reasons such as low enrollment.

A fledgling union representing part-time faculty members at Suffolk University has scored what its leaders are trumpeting as a major organizing victory, by enlisting the support of nearly 58 percent of part-time instructors who work on the Massachusetts campus. Under the terms of the union's first contract, signed last spring, the union -- the Suffolk Affiliated Faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors -- needed to recruit at least 55 percent of part-time faculty members by today if it was to have the power to charge those who had not joined a fee to cover the costs of representing them. As of early September, the union had enlisted just 17 percent of part-timers, giving rise to worries that it would be unable to meet the 55-percent threshold in time.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reached a tentative agreement today with a union representing graduate students who work there as teaching assistants or researchers, potentially clearing the way for the end of a strike that had disrupted some classes on the campus. Bargaining teams representing the university's administration and the student workers' union, the Graduate Employees Organization, settled on a tentative pact this morning after the university removed a final sticking point by agreeing to the union's demand that the university guarantee tuition waivers for teaching and graduate assistants who are not Illinois residents. The union's strike committee has agreed to stop picketing and will vote tonight on whether to suspend the strike entirely. If the strike is ended and the union's membership informally approves the contract this evening, the union will hold a for...

Dustin (Lance) Black, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay of a 2008 film about the life of a pioneering gay politician, Harvey Milk, has been blocked from participating in a panel discussion on sexuality at Hope College because of his gay advocacy, according to The Holland Sentinel, a local newspaper. The paper quoted the dean of students for the private Michigan college as saying officials there had put a halt to a roundtable planned by students because they believed, based on past experiences with such events, that Mr. Black's appearance would be too divisive to truly advance academic discussions of the issues involved. The college's English Department is still seeking to have Mr. Black speak to a screenwriting class.

A former doctoral student at Georgia State University has joined a former director of its Middle East Institute in filing a federal discrimination lawsuit alleging that the university tolerated anti-Muslim bias against the student and then retaliated against both her and the institute's director when they complained. The director, Dona J. Stewart, initially filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the university had said it was cooperating with the agency's investigation. The EEOC gave Ms. Stewart the go-ahead to bring a lawsuit (without passing judgment on the validity of her claims) after determining it probably could not process her complaint in a timely manner. Among its allegations, the lawsuit claims a faculty member repeatedly asked the student if she was carrying bombs under her traditional headscarf.

The American Association of University Professors plans to investigate the San Francisco Art Institute over its decision to lay off several tenured professors this year on the grounds of financial exigency. Among the issues an AAUP investigative committee will explore is whether the institute violated the professors' academic freedom and right to due process. The institute announced the firings last spring after failing to reach agreement with its faculty union on salary reductions. A spokesman for the institute said at the time that its decision of which professors to fire had been based on considerations such as seniority and how essential the professors were to the institute's core curriculum.