The Center for Constitutional Rights has been providing legal counsel to Professor Steven Salaita who returned a signed contract to teach in the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Tomorrow this intrepid organization is announcing a press call to inform the public of a “new development” in the Salaita summary dismissal case. I presume…
Nicholas Stewart, a student at Western Illinois University, and editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, the Western Courier, was suspended from his position last week by the administration, and is being brought up on charges of violating the Code of Student Conduct because he recorded video of a riot on campus, and sold that video to…
Dennis Cariello, a lawyer and former US Department of Education senior administrator writing in The Hill this week, offered a sober and troubling assessment of the growing college debt crisis. In his article, Mr. Cariello notes that American colleges and universities face heightened financial pressures as the Great Recession sputters to an end. He reports that…
John Wilson’s post containing the letter from the national AAUP to the Marquette administration somewhat clarifies several of the issues with McAdams—that is, clarifies the issues without presuming to resolve them. The university’s position has become that McAdams has repeatedly referred to students by name in his personal blog or other public communications–not simply that…
Last week, AcademeBlog posted a letter from Daniel Maguire about the John McAdams suspension by Marquette University, and an essay by Martin Kich about it. The following letter from Gregory Scholtz of the AAUP was sent today to Marquette and posted by McAdams on his blog. January 26, 2015 Dr. Michael R. Lovell President Marquette…
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise fired Steven Salaita for extramural utterances on Twitter. She gave an interview for the influential The News-Gazette: no other paper has pipelines to the university administration as does the Champaign-Urbana paper. In her interview she rather cavalierly dismissed the impact of a possible American Association of University Professors censure. She…
The hawkish Washington Post has actually published an op-ed advocating the abolition of the military academies. Having been involved in a career struggle a few years back with the Air Force Academy, or more precisely with its partisans, I did a double take to encounter this article in one of America’s “elite” newspapers. Its essential argument is the military…
On January 19, David Halperin published a piece with the Huffington Post on the purchase of a controlling interest in Inside Higher Ed by the private-equity firm Quad Partners, which has invested heavily in for-profit colleges and educational consulting firms. Here are the opening paragraphs of Halperin’s article: “Quad Partners, a New York private equity…
This past week, we received “over the transom” the following e-mail from a non-tenure-eligible full-time faculty member. I am reprinting it with his permission but with all identifying details removed. I think that the e-mail itself conveys the predicament of these faculty more pointedly than any paraphrase and comment that I might provide. _________________________ I…