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Amendment to SCS Statement on Professional Ethics

The SCS Statement on Professional Ethics, which was first developed in the 1980s, has been revised several times in the last thirty years. The membership has approved all revisions. Most recently, SCS members approved changes to: (1) the language on working conditions, which was revised to take account of the growing numbers of contingent faculty; and (2) to the section on cultural property, which was out of date.

Despite these improvements, the SCS division of Professional Matters and Board of Directors realize that further revision of the statement is necessary in order to ensure that the statement: (a) reflects current AAUP standards, broad conceptions of equality and non-discrimination, and changes in the academy's and society's understanding of and response to harassment of all forms; and (b) is structured in order to incorporate these changes in a comprehensible format. Work on the revised draft statement in 2018 was highly collaborative and involved all committees in the Professional Matters division. A revised document was approved by the board in summer 2018. After a member comment period in Fall 2018, a few additional changes were made, namely to ensure that pronoun use is gender-inclusive and to reflect the fact that our annual meeting harassment policy is currently under revision and will hopefully be a joint policy with AIA for the 2020 meeting and going forward.

Members should note that the statement is intended as an explication of values and principles and does not include detailed grievance procedures. Grievance procedures can be found in the Society's Regulations.

Members should also note that the process of improving the statement is incremental and iterative. The SCS Board of Directors and Professional Matters division welcome requests from members for further improvements to be incorporated and voted on in the 2020 elections. Such requests should be sent to the Executive Director (helen.cullyer@nyu.edu)

You can click on the links below to view the following documents:

The current SCS Statement on Professional Ethics

The proposed revised draft of the SCS Statement on Professional Ethics

A version of the statement comparing the current and revised versions

(In the PDF, text that has been deleted or moved is indicated by strikethrough and text that has been added or moved from elsewhere in the document is underlined. The red and green colors simply indicate different phases of revision and are not significant at this stage.)