The Center for Constitutional Rights has announced that a federal judge has ordered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to release long sought after e-mail. Steven Salaita’s attorneys have attempted, under the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain e-mail relevant to the summary dismissal and firing of the tenured associate professor in the American Indian…
Reporting on comments by New Jersey governor Chris Christie in Iowa on Thursday, Casey Quinlan writes: “Christie said students shouldn’t expect to receive a degree that will significantly improve their earnings for nothing.” Christie also said: But it’s also the story of how our system is supposed to work – a system where we all…
At the end of an editorial in The New York Times on the Department of Education’s decision to forgive student loans owed to Corinthian Colleges, the Editorial Board wrote: Critics are already casting this as a windfall for former students. But it is important to remember that this loan money flowed to fraudulent institutions that…
What follows is the first part of a posting by Public Accountability Initiative, which describes itself as “a non-profit, public interest research organization investigating power and corruption at the heights of business and government.” Read the full report at the PAI site: In May 2015, an extraordinary example of academic intimidation involving the oil and gas…
Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shared the following message by email with faculty on June 9 ahead of an emergency meeting of the Faculty Senate. The message was also posted on a web page maintained by the University and devoted to budget issues. As we prepare to meet, I want to again…
A colleague at San Diego State University recently sent the following email message to other CSU faculty members. I thought it worth sharing more broadly. June 6 marked the anniversary of President Kennedy’s 1963 Commencement Address at San Diego State University (then San Diego State College). During the Commencement exercises, JFK was awarded an honorary…
The following is the text of a statement released yesterday by Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is encouraging that the Chancellor pledges consistency with AAUP policies. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not Wisconsin politicians will permit that. Chancellor Blank’s reference to AAUP should remind us of the…
What follows is a letter sent today by 32 Instructors in the Writing Programs of Arizona State University (further information can be found at the asuagainst55 website): June 8, 2015 Dear Dr. Mark Lussier, English Department Chair, and Dr. George Justice, Dean of Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University: The…
Two thoughtful yet troubling articles, published within a week of each other, startled higher education leaders last week. In the great debate about which factors best explain the growing achievement gaps between rich and poor students, these studies reached important conclusions about the “drivers” contributing to the widening disparities. Isabel Sawhill, writing for the series…
As a result of student, faculty, and public pressure, the Florida State University administration are conceding to several of the policy recommendations in our donor policy report [see: https://academeblog.org/2015/06/04/a-student-review-of-the-florida-state-university-gift-acceptance-policy-undue-influence-and-charles-koch-foundation/]. The FSU student paper broke the story, wherein the FSU Foundation acknowledges that it is “taking the report from Progress Coalition seriously”: “’We are reviewing the…