BY JOAN W. SCOTT Our colleagues at Bogacizi University in Istanbul, Turkey, have asked us for support. Below are a letter from Professor Zeynep Gambetti asking for support and a letter that is now circulating to indicate international support. Appeal from Bogazici University Subject: Bogazici University under attack since Jan. 1 Dear friends and colleagues,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Earlier today, a Turkish court sentenced an academic, Yonca Demir from Bilgi University, to three years in prison for the crime of signing a peace petition critical of the government. It marked the longest sentence yet given to the 1128 professors who signed a 2016 petition by Academics for Peace that angered…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On the day before Thanksgiving, the poem featured in the Poem-a-Day newsletter of the Academy of American Poets was Sawako Nakayasu’s prose poem “Deflated Rubber Turkey.” This wonderfully light and yet riddle-like poem is available at: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/deflated-rubber-turkey?utm. Sawako Nakayasu is an Assistant Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. She is…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is excerpted from a December 7 article on the website of the Index on Censorship. A group of court reporters scurried along the halls of Istanbul’s massive Çağlayan Courthouse on the morning of 7 December, taking pictures of the tables showing the trial schedules of several high criminal courts…
POSTED BY HENRY REICHMAN The following is the text of a letter sent today (July 25) to President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and signed by nearly 400 U.S. academics, including AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, AAUP First Vice-President Henry Reichman, AAUP-CBC Chair Howard Bunsis, AAUP General Counsel…
BY HANK REICHMAN A few days ago, shortly before the failed coup in Turkey that sought to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, I posted an item to this blog, “Attacks on Academic Freedom Continue in Turkey.” When word of the coup attempt arrived very soon after my post went up, I quickly…
BY HANK REICHMAN UPDATE: THIS PIECE WAS PUBLISHED SHORTLY BEFORE WORD BEGAN TO SPREAD OF A POSSIBLE MILITARY COUP IN TURKEY. THE POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SUCH A COUP, SUCCESSFUL OR NOT, FOR THE DEVELOPMENTS DISCUSSED IN THIS POST ARE, OF COURSE, UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME. In March, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum and I issued a…
The following statement signed by AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum and First Vice-President Henry Reichman was released today, March 30. The American Association of University Professors does not normally take positions on alleged violations of or threats to academic freedom outside the United States, both because we are hesitant to impose our standards on others, whose…
The following appeared in the January 15 issue of University World News and has been highlighted in the weekly Academic Freedom Media Review published by Scholars at Risk, which tracks violations of academic freedom and civil liberties in colleges and universities around the world. While the AAUP does not generally take formal positions on violations…
This is from Labour Start, which promotes trade unionism internationally: “Turkey’s first mass May Day demonstrations in Istanbul’s Taksim Square took place in 1976, with the participation of hundreds of thousands. A year later, half a million people took part — but 37 were killed by gunfire. “No one has ever been prosecuted for this…