Ten Questions for Conference and Chapter Leaders: 1. Ohio Conference

This is the first post in what I hope will be a series, in which conference and chapter leaders comment on the issues that they are trying to address and the initiatives that they are trying to organize and to promote. I intend to contact conference or chapter leaders directly to invite them to participate,…

How Money Mattered in the Salaita Case

The CAFT report on the Salaita case has sparked another debate about whether donors influenced the decision, with Steven Lubet and Liel Leibovitz arguing that the report refutes the idea of donor influence, and Phan Nyugen and Peter Kirstein rejecting those arguments. In one sense, the question of whether Phyllis Wise was influenced by donors…

The Young Invincibles’ Annual Report on State Support for Higher Education; Or, Analogously, What If Almost Half of Your Students Received D’s and F’s

Here is the table summarizing the results from the Young Invincibles report on state support for higher education over this past year: The detailed profiles for each state are available at: http://www.studentimpactproject.org/state_report_cards You can see from the table that four states have received A’s; ten have received B’s; thirteen have received C’s; twelve have received…

Phan Nguyen on Outside Donor Influence on Salaita Firing, Suspension, and Dismissal

The issue of possible donor influence in the Steven Salaita contract-revocation case is significant because on-campus personnel decisions should not be influenced by external actors. Academic freedom and shared governance are severely attenuated if universities and colleges outsource, and are unduly influenced by off-campus forces intruding into personnel and hiring processes on campus. Remember Alan Dershowitz and the…

Higher Education: The Problem with Priorities

It’s been interesting to watch over the years how priorities emerge on college and university campuses. Some develop organically, whether in service of an academic program, to meet a perceived need, or at their best, to fulfill an institution’s strategic plan. They are part of the business of evolution, matching and balancing people, programs and…

The 2015 AAUP Redbook

The 2015 edition of the AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports (widely known as the AAUP Redbook) is now available to be ordered. The Redbook presents in convenient format a wide range of AAUP policy statements. The current edition, the eleventh, includes basic statements on academic freedom, tenure, and due process; academic governance; professional ethics; research and teaching;…

In Decline or Under Attack?: American Higher Education Today

A commenter called “blackcampbell” posted this response to my piece, “From Great Universities to ‘Knowledge Factories’: Another American Institution in Decline“: There are several aspects to the decline of academia that the author — not surprisngly, on his rush to look for a corporate strawman — misses. The “decline” is due to many forces 1)…