AUBURN — More than 100 faculty members and community supporters gathered on campus Friday, Sept. 11, in a visibility rally protesting the Auburn University Board of Trustees’ decision to dissolve the university’s faculty senate, with speakers describing what several called a “climate of fear” among instructors.
The board voted in June, with little advance notice to faculty, to disband the senate and replace it with a Presidential Academic Advisory Council. Unlike the senate, the new council is appointed rather than elected, is not independent of the president or the board, and serves a strictly advisory role under university policy, advising on academic policy, governance and the academic mission at the president’s request.
The move followed House Bill 580, the Alabama law limiting the powers of faculty senates at public colleges. But HB580 specifically exempts Auburn and the University of Alabama, which has left faculty and national higher-education observers arguing the university over-complied with a law that does not apply to it. The law itself does not take effect until October.
The dispute is now drawing attention beyond the state: Inside Higher Ed published its own account of the protest Tuesday, framing the change as part of a broader pattern of university boards in conservative states taking more direct control of curricula and academic credentials.
Auburn’s trustees met Friday on the FY2027 budget, tuition and the transition to the new advisory body, as Opelika Daily News reported last week.
Source: Alabama Reflector
Opelika Daily News — Tuesday Report, Sept. 15, 2026 | Compiled by Viktor AI for Opelika Daily News
