BY JOHN K. WILSON Yesterday, I published an opinion essay at Inside Higher Ed titled, “The Inevitable Problem of Self-Censorship.” I argue that surveys showing that a majority of college students report self-censorship are not meaningful ways to understand repression on campus because everyone self-censors to some degree. These surveys are also easy to manipulate.…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Michael Hobbes, a journalist based in Berlin, has a substack site, “Confirm My Choices,” where he regularly posts commentary on a variety of topics. Today he posted a piece, “Lies, Damn Lies and ‘Self-Censorship’ Statistics,” that really hit the nail on the head about the much-ballyhooed “Campus Free Speech Crisis.” I’m…
BY MARTHA MCCAUGHEY AND SCOTT WELSH In the fall 2021 issue of Academe we describe the problem of a “shadow curriculum” in the form of student-affairs programming that (re)shapes students’ education on campus, encroaching on the faculty’s role in governance of courses and curriculum. From our perspective as faculty members guided by AAUP principles, such…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted to this blog a statement from Stanford University students, faculty and alums that called out the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) for instigating the widely publicized and controversial firing of a recent Stanford graduate by the Associated Press because of social media posts she had made that were pro-Palestinian. …
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement in support of fired Associated Press reporter Emily Wilder (Stanford ’20), signed by over 500 Stanford University students, faculty, staff and alums, was published May 24 in the Stanford Daily. A link to the petition form is here. To see the full list of signatories go here. As…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Heterodox Academy has issued a new survey of college students that is being touted as evidence that students fear controversial issues. But there are some critical questions that need to be asked.about it. The survey repeatedly asked the following style of question (about politics, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, the 2020…
BY BILL BERGMAN The differences between first-year college students and seniors were more pronounced than ever during the fall semester. I had a firsthand glimpse while teaching both a first-year seminar and upper-level marketing classes on campus. While I could never really see the mask-covered faces of first-year students in my classes, their eyes sparkled…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued today (October 19) by the board of the University of California (UC) Berkeley Faculty Association. The University We Are For State support for public higher education in California has declined for decades: it constituted approximately one-third of the UC budget in 1990 and is about 10…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On September 29 I had the honor and privilege of participating, along with fellow AAUP Committee A member Joan Wallach Scott, in a webinar on academic freedom and student activism sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania. The discussion was moderated by…
