Forty Years of Faculty Reports

BY EDWIN BATTISTELLA Like many universities, mine has an annual faculty report, which goes to the chair, the division director, and the provost. Today, the reports are electronic rather than typed, but during the nearly four decades I have taught at various universities, the basic categories in the reports have remained: teaching, scholarship, and service.…

Library Collections and Coronavirus Capitalism

BY DAVID EIFLER AND MARGARET PHILLIPS When universities abruptly shut down in-person instruction in the spring, academic libraries followed suit.  Librarians and other university front line workers applauded these decisions that prioritized the health and safety of staff during this unprecedented public health crisis.  And libraries continued to fulfill many of their service missions in…

Midwest AAUP Coalition’s “Call for Racial Justice on Campus”

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is a group statement from this coalition of AAUP chapters. As educators committed to the public good, we recognize our responsibility—on campus and off—to advocate for students and fellow workers made even more vulnerable during the pandemic. The global pandemic is aggravating deep, endemic inequities and racial disparities, including…

Contingent Faculty and the Global Pandemic

BY THE AAUP The AAUP’s Committee on Contingency and the Profession today issued the following principles and recommendations: Our world is today engulfed in the global COVID-19 pandemic, with enormous loss of life. The unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many higher education institutions are preparing to…

Debunking Mary Grabar

BY JOHN K. WILSON Mary Grabar, a fellow at the right-wing Alexander Hamilton Institute, has written an essay praising Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) for introducing the Saving American History Act of 2020, “a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.” This is…