Legal Support Fund for Displaced IWU Professors

On August 31, 2020, Illinois Wesleyan University issued one-year terminal contracts to three tenured professors and made negotiations (for moves, retirements, separations) with six more, due to its closure of the anthropology, French, Italian, and religious studies programs. For more info:

3 Illinois Wesleyan University faculty terminated and rally cites crisis in humanities 

We are a group of alumni, students, committed others, and friends of the university whose ideals we once knew. We are now here to offer financial support to the affected faculty, knowing that legal battles may have occurred or may remain for many of them, especially the three who have been issued terminal contracts. Given the concerns cited by the American Association of University Professors about this process, we know this is far from over. 

Interrupting a faculty member's career after many years at an institution has devastating prospects. These individuals have dedicated their lives to become experts in their fields and years investing in the development of IWU's reputation for excellence. Simply finding a new position, during a global pandemic no less, is not so simple. These professors were rooted in Bloomington-Normal, have homes and families there; they have invested years of their career, their livelihood, their teaching and research and love, and they are now being asked to move on. 

We hope that this fundraiser, which will be split equitably amongst the affected faculty, will both provide tangible support as well as a balm for this gut-wrenching circumstance. If you wish to rally and stand with these professors, and their subsequent disciplines, please give--a little, a lot, whatever you can muster--today, and we'll be sure that it gets to them.

And if you land here having had a hand in the decisions made... these funds could have, instead, gone to growing these tremendous disciplines and people at IWU. As you turn away from them, we turn toward them.