POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN

The following is reposted with permission from the website of the Colorado state conference of the AAUP. 

Despite that the symposium gods burdened Boulder with an inevitable spring blizzard, the AAUP Academic Freedom Symposium at CU-Boulder on April 29th was inspiring and memorable. The melodramatic weather could not discourage participants or attendees; by the afternoon sessions skies and roads cleared. About 50 people attended all or part of this historic event.

We’re proud to present excerpts here and on YouTube:

Diversity and Academic Freedom, featuring opening remarks by Steve Mumme, Co-President of the Colorado Conference of the AAUP, followed by a panel on ideological and gender diversity, with E. Christian Kopff (Classics, CU-Boulder, and frequent blogger at The Imaginative Conservative), Margaret LeCompte (Emerita Professor of Education, President of the CU-AAUP chapter) and Peter Bonilla, Vice President of Programs at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):

Contingency and the Profession, featuring Caprice Lawless, adjunct at Front Range Community College and Second Vice President of the national AAUP, Maria Maisto, Executive Director of the New Faculty Majority, Nate Bork of Arapahoe Community College, the center of a recent AAUP academic freedom investigation, and Joe Berry, author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower, the seminal text on contingent faculty organizing:

Jonathan Poritz on Technology and the Future of Higher Education, featuring Jonathan Poritz of Colorado State University—Pueblo and co-author of Education Is Not an App, with an introduction by Jonathan Rees, co-President of the Colorado Conference of the AAUP:

Ward Churchill, our keynote address, featuring Ward Churchill, with an introduction by CU-Boulder’s Don Eron, member of the national AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure:

As with many successful conferences, much of the symposium action occurred between sessions, as participants and attendees conferred, laughed, commiserated, debated, and networked over coffee, pastries, pizza and soft drinks courtesy of the Colorado Conference.

Thank you to all our participants and attendees, with additional thanks to Caprice Lawless and Melinda Myrick for running the symposium “bookstore,” and to the Assembly of State Conferences for a grant that allowed us to stage the symposium.