The IU Board of Trustees changed dozens of policies in June after the statehouse revoked faculty’s say in university governance. One of those changes allows IU to reassign some professors to another campus and reduce their salaries.
The policy on merger, reorganization, and elimination of academic units and programs used to require consent from faculty belonging to a unit that was being eliminated before relocating them. The new language gives the university “sole discretion” to reassign them to another campus according to its business needs.
The revised policy also gives the university sole discretion to reduce a faculty member’s base pay after a unit is reorganized, which was specifically prohibited before the changes.
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The Bloomington chapter of the American Association of University Professors protested the changes in August, writing on its website that while the policy “retains some structures for consultation and review, these are now more explicitly subordinate to administrative discretion.”
A representative for the organization was unavailable for comment and the university did not respond to a request for an interview.
