Among the first things the author did upon becoming a professor in 1959 was to join the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). To do so almost seemed like a religious obligation, a step any serious academic would eagerly and proudly take. The AAUP was then the largest and most influential academic association in the United States, an organization whose founding principles had become the bedrock upon which academic freedom and the security of tenure had been raised. Thirty-five years later the author resigned. It had become clear to him that the AAUP had become part of the problems then roiling the academic world, problems that have continued and intensified to this day. In a deeply personal account, the author examines the AAUP's moral decline as it has gradually deserted its commitment to academic freedom. (Contains 11 footnotes.)