A hand putting a ballot in box

2024 Endorsement from Higher Education

BY MATTHEW BOEDY With organizational help from Washington Post humor columnist Alexandria Petri’s recent piece on presidential endorsements . . . The Washington Post, among other major newspapers, is not endorsing presidential candidates this year.   And major universities are stepping back from issuing statements on matters of public concern. Since the latter institutions are choosing…

Image of a retro-style TV with a brain floating on water on the screen.

Journal of Academic Freedom Examines the Rift Between Propaganda and Truth-Telling

POSTED BY THE AAUP We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 15 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, “Truth-Telling versus Propaganda—Exposing the Rift,” invited scholarly articles building on the themes of the previous two volumes to advance understandings of the salience of academic freedom not only to higher…

Statement of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Penn Administration’s Escalating Police and Security Actions

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On October 26, the Executive Committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter issued the following public statement regarding the recent police raid on Penn undergraduate students: We are alarmed by the Penn administration’s escalating use of police action against Penn students. So too are we alarmed by the University’s pattern—established…

Timeline of crackdowns on protests at University of Massachusetts Amherst shows image of encampment with tents, Palestinian flag, and signs

Being Revolutionary

BY ASHA NADKARNI AND LAURA BRIGGS This post is part of a blog series, organized by Annelise Orleck, that will focus on recent crackdowns on protests at US college and university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza. You can read the first post and an introduction to the series here. Like many campuses, the University…

How Far Have We Gone?

BY MALICK W. GHACHEM In the weeks since writing my recent piece for Academe magazine on last year’s Israel-Palestine campus conflict, the atmosphere on my own campus (MIT) has become, if anything, even more tense. The pressures bearing down on both administrators and students remain all too apparent, as does the war of attrition about…

Industrial smokestacks spew smoke into a hazy sky

Why Polluting Speech Should Not Be Regulated

BY JOHN K. WILSON The temptation to regulate free speech in the name of a higher good is a constant danger on the left, and the right. Too often, we ignore how centrist administrators and thinkers endorse censorship too easily, and how much power they hold. I think the greatest threats to campus free speech…