BY RUBÉN MARTINEZ Crises in intellectual and religious thought have been opportunities for the reformulation of the basic principles and ideas of existing bodies of knowledge for decades. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realism raised the specter of the destructive character of accepted theories of law. In the 1960s, Vatican II, the twenty-first Roman…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL The assault on academic freedom and campus-speech rights for pro-Palestinian students and faculty has been so fast and furious in the wake of October 7 that one hardly knows where to begin. Indeed, even to write that simple—even obvious—sentence feels risky: a voice in my head asks, Can I write that…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Right-wing attacks on academia allege that modern secular universities are hotbeds of liberal orthodoxy and must be reformed to expand the range of views on offer to students. This past year, North Carolina Republican legislators and their appointed university trustees used this rhetoric to justify bypassing the faculty and creating a new…
BY ELLEN SCHRECKER As the tragic conflict unfolds in Israel and Gaza, the AAUP may now face attempts to fire pro-Palestinian professors that could make earlier academic purges look like a tea party. I know whereof I speak. I have studied academic freedom and higher education for over forty years and traced the AAUP’s failure…
BY COLUMBIA FACULTY UNION, COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO This statement was submitted by the Columbia Faculty Union, Local 6602 IFT/AFT, representing part-time faculty at Columbia College Chicago, on Monday, October 30, as they began a strike. In the heart of Chicago, the Columbia Faculty Union (CFAC) represents a diverse group of faculty members, many of whom…
BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA CHAPTER, AAUP The following statement was issued on October 28, 2023. Over the past few weeks, the Executive Committee of the University of Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Penn) has heard from scores of colleagues who, like us, are gravely concerned about violations of…
BY JOHN AUBREY DOUGLASS There is much to worry about as we approach 2024: attacks on academic freedom, on free speech, on open societies, and attempts to degrade democracy, and not just here in the United States. As I discuss in my article “Here and Abroad, Universities Face an Autocratic Playbook” in the recent issue…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2023 issue of Academe, out this week. The full table of contents for the issue is available at https://www.aaup.org/issue/fall-2023-confronting-legislative-attacks-higher-education. Students returning to New College of Florida this fall found a campus in the midst of stark transformation. More than a third of the faculty…
BY JONATHAN GRAUBART The horrifying violence in the Hamas-Israel war has aroused great passions across the United States. Both Hamas and Israel have plenty of blood on their hands. What concerns me here is the restricted space for discussion. Almost all politicians restrict their condemnations to Hamas and have little tolerance for those who address…
BY ELI MEYERHOFF AND ISAAC KAMOLA Learning is under attack. Right-wing politicians, activists, and well-funded political organizations have organized assaults on schools, universities, and libraries with book bans, surveillance and harassment of teachers, canceling classes, and “divisive concepts” bills that limit teachers’ rights to talk about topics of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The AAUP…