BY AN ANONYMOUS SAINT CATHERINE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Saint Catherine University sits on an idyllic green bluff in a serene part of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It’s not too far from the Mississippi River. When it’s hushed, you can hear the faint sounds of a barge horn as it slowly heads down to New Orleans. It’s the…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE University of Florida administrators have created a slideshow to help faculty understand the implications of the state’s new law, House Bill 7, also known as the Stop WOKE Act. One slide says, “At its core, the bill’s message is: ‘No one likes to be told what to think. And that includes students.’…
BY WISCONSIN CONFERENCE OF THE AAUP On Monday, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Jennifer Mnookin as the next chancellor of UW–Madison. Within hours, many leading Wisconsin Republicans—both elected officials and candidates for statewide office—issued nearly identical statements of opposition to her appointment. We write to condemn these statements…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Since the release last week of the report by the AAUP’s Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina system, UNC administrators have responded to the charge that, as the report puts it, the UNC system is “in trouble.” Unsurprisingly, responses from university officials…
BY ANDREW TONKOVICH It’s hard to find a better-funded speech rights outfit than one purchasing digital ads on the virtual front page of the New York Times. Setting aside the peculiar politics of the “libertarian-leaning” Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), its newest campaign, which I noticed in early April, is puzzling, if not…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT On Thursday, April 28, members of local AAUP chapters held a press conference at which they presented the report by the AAUP’s Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina system, which was released that morning. The report shows how in the seventeen-campus University…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL At Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University this semester, the university administration censored a campus event featuring Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University (Abdulhadi is also a past recipient of the AAUP’s Georgina Smith Award). Organized by a student group—Cardozo on Israel and Palestine (CIP)—the event had been…
BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU In the past several years, Linfield University in Oregon has gained a reputation for creating a hostile work environment. One reason is that it has displayed a willingness to harass and even fire tenured faculty who are willing to point out its failures in key areas like sexual harassment, faculty governance, and…
BY HARVEY J. GRAFF Today’s campaigns to ban books in schools—nationally organized and well-funded by right-wing donors and interest groups—are unprecedented, unconstitutional, and inhumane. Their instigators, unlike predecessors who led past campaigns, are ignorant of the texts they seek to erase, and sometimes burn. They have no understanding of “the people” or “public interest”; children’s…
BY TWO TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS The news has been inundated with reports of relentless attacks on intellectual freedom and attacks on libraries. Just last week a blog detailed the many ways in which books and information are being challenged in schools and in public service sectors. Less well-reported, however, is the ongoing attack on…