BY HANK REICHMAN Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students. To briefly summarize, three weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On January 19, 2024, PEN America held a major summit on free expression at Harvard University. But it seems top administrators at Harvard are the ones who really need a lesson on the topic, since that same day they announced a new “Guidance on Protest and Dissent” that restricts the right…
BY KARMA R. CHÁVEZ Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Callie Kennedy and Parham Daghighi, former teaching assistants (TAs) in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. I will detail the specific reason for our acquaintance, but the broader reason has to do with the…
By MATTHEW BOEDY Last month I encouraged faculty to put democracy on the syllabus. In that post, I wrote: “No one is coming to save us. We all have to do this together.” To further that call, I urge faculty now to put democracy in the community. AAUP unions and advocacy conferences do a lot…
BY JONATHAN REES I am old enough to have used a physical gradebook when I started teaching. It looked like it was filled with graph paper, but there was definitely an extra-large space on the left for the students’ names and room to do some calculating all the way on the other side. I abandoned…
By JOHN K. WILSON In a breathtaking assault on academic freedom, Indiana University has suspended Abdulkader Sinno, an associate professor of political science and Middle Eastern studies, for the crime of reserving a room for a speech that the administration (in direct violation of the First Amendment) attempted to ban. Sinno reserved a room for…
BY MARJORIE HEINS The disastrous December 5 congressional hearing in which three university presidents were lambasted for allegedly not dealing with antisemitism on campus was a political ambush from the start, and the presidents, instead of blandly acquiescing in some outrageously inappropriate questioning, needed to respond with righteous indignation. The tone was set early on…
BY JONATHAN REES The key part of what the AAUP Redbook has to say about the role of faculty in the selection of a new university president is in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities: “Joint effort of a most critical kind must be taken when an institution chooses a new president. The…
BY JENNIFER RUTH I think he meant “scalped.” Right-wing activist Chris Rufo posted “SCAPLED: Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns” on X at 10 am today. He then reposted someone saying, “Claudine Gay’s is a huge scalp. No doubt about it. Especially when combined with Liz Magill’s a week ago. But we cannot rest on our…
BY TIMOTHY KAUFMAN-OSBORN Much has been said about the radical right’s assault on the autonomy of US public higher education and that campaign’s subversion of academic freedom. Today, for example, we all know about Florida’s Stop WOKE Act as well as it successor, SB 266, which expressly prohibits faculty from teaching that “systemic racism, sexism,…
BY THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA The following statement by the president of the Middle East Studies Association and the chair of that association’s Committee on Academic Freedom was published online on December 18. Open Letter to US and Canadian College and University Presidents We write on behalf of the Middle East…
BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The following statement was issued on December 18, 2023. Since October 7th, our university community has experienced extraordinary challenges to academic freedom. These challenges emerge in a global climate of restrictions on Palestine- related speech, along with a national climate of attacks against the…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE By definition, a military base, regardless of location, is a potential military target in a time of war. Adults, be they enlisted personnel or civilians, who work in such a place, a place dedicated to warfare, implicitly accept the risk of attack. The risk might be low and rarely discussed, but on…
BY ALAN SINGER An earlier version of this blog post appeared on the Daily Kos. We are reposting it here with permission of the author. Many of us have seen the congressional sound bites. MAGA superstar Elise Stefanik made mincemeat out of Ivy League college presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of…
BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The following statement was issued on December 14, 2023. Since October 7, Columbia University has experienced extraordinary, even unprecedented, challenges to academic freedom and violations of faculty governance. Untenured faculty have been harassed for organizing events squarely within their fields of expertise; a Barnard department…
