BY ASHLEY DENNIS This book review was originally published in Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), and is republished with their permission. As the U.S. reckons with systemic racism in the wake of global protests over the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, reparations for Black people has…
BY MARY A. HERMANN Research, personal experiences, and watching our academic mother colleagues navigate the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the article in the fall issue of Academe, “COVID-19, Academic Mothers, and Opportunities for the Academy,” that I coauthored with Cheryl Neale-McFall. We wrote the article late last spring when we were optimistic about the length of…
BY THE AAUP On October 28, the AAUP sent a letter to New York University president Andrew Hamilton to express concern about the cancellation by Zoom of an October 23 event hosted by the NYU chapter of the AAUP and co-sponsored by NYU departments and institutes. The text of the letter appears below. Dear President…
BY BENJAMIN BALTHASER AND BILL V. MULLEN As US colleges and universities were preparing to reopen their doors in August, we wrote in our fall 2020 Academe article, “The Necroliberal University,” that the reopening reflected a “necroliberal” consensus among university administrators that the benefits of a return to normalcy—and fiscal solvency—outweighed the risks of the…
BY JEFFREY SOMMERS A half century back, as noted in the fall 2020 Academe article I coauthored, “A Marshall Plan for Rebuilding Higher Education,” the United States began its retreat from public investments that had originally made it the world’s premier power. No longer wishing, or even thinking it possible, to retain its position of…
BY CHERYL NEALE-MCFALL Through our research and personal experiences, we know that the struggle is real for mothers in academia, especially during this pandemic. My experience is consistent with the challenges described in “COVID-19, Academic Mothers, and Opportunities for the Academy,” an article I coauthored with Mary A. Hermann for the fall issue of Academe.…
BY CHRIS ARNEY In 2020, The United States Military Academy at West Point terminated the employment of an assistant professor whose specialty is American women’s writing. In addition to her teaching, this professor helped lead the academy’s program to support talented cadets applying for graduate scholarships such as the Rhodes, Truman, and Marshall scholarships. Under…
BY CATHRYN BAILEY I once had a faculty colleague who could be as blunt as a barbell, as direct as a laser beam, and as unblinking as an ancient tortoise. A middle-aged woman of color, she eschewed the feminine niceties required to earn her likability badge in the raced and gendered game of social and…
BY THE NYU-AAUP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 10/23/2020 Today, Zoom unilaterally shut down a webinar hosted by the NYU chapter of the AAUP, and co-sponsored by several NYU departments and institutes. The webinar was scheduled to discuss the censorship, by Zoom and other big tech platforms, of an open classroom session last month at SFSU, featuring the…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On October 17, about 300 Northwestern University students and supporters held a protest in Evanston as part of their ongoing efforts to abolish the campus police department and enact other reforms. During the protest, a campus banner was burned, various buildings and even murals in town were tagged with messages including…