BY CHRISTIAN K. ANDERSON AND PATRICIA SULLIVAN We are reprinting with permission this guest column published yesterday in the University of South Carolina Daily Gamecock. On April 25, 1963—60 years ago—Robert F. Kennedy spoke at a meeting of the University of South Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He was invited by…
BY JOSHUA KNICKERBOCKER In early 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) made headlines when one of the most popular AI-powered tools, ChatGPT, passed the medical licensing boards, as reported in an Insider story. The ability of AI to pass difficult examinations easily and reliably has prompted many scholars to question the implications for academia. ChatGPT is a…
BY DAVID AUDRETSCH, CHRISTIAN FISCH, CHIARA FRANZONI, PAUL MOMTAZ, AND SILVIO VISMARA Academic freedom matters for many reasons. Our new study that is available for free download at SSRN empirically shows that academic freedom can be related to economic growth through more innovation. Examining 157 countries over the 1900–2015 period, the study concludes that academic…
BY CHAVELLA T. PITTMAN Imagine a world where our campuses are… …incubators that birth a bounty of intellectual ideas that are fully pursued, investigated, taught, and disseminated. …celebrated because academic freedom is not only protected, but how it is protected has become an example to other endeavors. …reflections of a full range of ideas pursued…
BY GLYNN WOLAR The push toward implementing a workforce development orientation at the community colleges has been ongoing for several years. In 2016, the Brookings Institute published an extensive report articulating what might be termed an uncritically positive posture toward this development. There is no doubt that community college administrators are generally enthused about implementing…
BY HANK KALET There has been a strike wave across academia that is altering the landscape for those of us who teach and work in higher education—and Rutgers is poised to join the party. Strikes at The New School, the University of California system, the University of Illinois Chicago, and threats by faculty, adjuncts, and…
BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN When the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees chair David Boliek explained the trustees’ rationale for seeking to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership, he cited an imaginary problem in search of a blatantly political solution. On January 28, on the Fox and Friends news…
BY LOIS K. COX AND KATHERINE H. TACHAU The actuality of the Iowa legislative session makes the time a few months ago when we wrote “The Erosion of Support for Education and Tenure in Iowa” for the winter 2023 issue of Academe seem halcyon in contrast. Our fears for the future of public education in…
BY PATRICIA NAVARRA “Employers threatening to cut off benefits is not uncommon, but actually doing it is,” offered Bethany Kosmicki, Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA) past president and member of the negotiating committee, as she discussed the TUGSA strike with National Public Radio. Yet health care benefits were deactivated for graduate teaching assistants this…
BY JORDAN HARPER AND ADRIANNA KEZAR In the winter 2023 issue of Academe, our article “Reprofessionalizing the Faculty” highlights campuses that are making systemic changes to better support non-tenure-track faculty, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Penn State, and the University of Denver. These institutions provided insights into why supporting non-tenure-track faculty is advantageous for student success…