BY JOHN K. WILSON The David Horowitz Freedom Center this month announced yet another campaign aimed at censoring free speech on college campuses. The latest effort is a Facebook ad targeting four left-leaning “America-hating” professors that the Horowitz Center claims has reached 100,000 people. One ad warns the University of Washington, “You have an AMERICA…
BY AARON BARLOW David Horowitz, whose attacks on “professors” caused a great deal of concern among the American faculty a decade ago, is back in the news in relation to Florida Gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, who spoke at a number of Horowitz’s Freedom Center conferences. DeSantis is quoted in the Washington Post from a conference speech…
BY AARON BARLOW In “From Austerity to Attacks on Scholars,” an article for Inside Higher Ed, Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud writes, “I discovered how the people attacking me were organized and trained through right-wing radio programs and websites in the language to use against intellectuals; they were set off like arrows from a bow”…
BY AARON BARLOW It’s been a bad year. Not just for higher education. And not just at it winds down. The coming 2018 does not bode well for American colleges and universities. For one thing, the Janus case against agency fees (when unions can assess non-members for fees as a result of gains and benefits…
BY AARON BARLOW The act of teaching is political. Yet Americans like to pretend that its schools are removed from the public sphere, that they focus on knowledge and skills, nothing more. Rightwing firebrand (though his spark has dimmed against the bright flames of newer agitators like Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos) David Horowitz has…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is the latest report from UnKoch My Campus. Although it does not entirely align with other recent discussions of this topic posted to this blog, I think that it contributes some new elements and details to that discussion: In the past month, state lawmakers across the country coordinated an…
BY HANK REICHMAN In previous posts to this blog I have criticized the blacklisting activities of two pro-Israel organizations, the Amcha Initiative and Canary Mission. The former group published a list of 218 faculty members in Middle East studies at U.S. colleges and universities who signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel…
Yesterday, Joerg Tiede posted an excerpt from his new book about the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles. Tiede noted that although the Declaration was presented on December 31, 1915, the AAUP members did not vote to approve it until January 1, 1916. So on this, the centennial of the of the slightly misdated Declaration, it’s…
Last week, at a meeting of the Academic Freedom Committee of the Professional Staff Congress (the CUNY faculty union), the name Anita Sarkeesian came up. Though she is not an academic (in the sense of being employed by a college or university), she felt forced to cancel an appearance at Utah State University due to threats…