BY JAY M. SMITH At UNC–Chapel Hill, one of the biggest frustrations arising from the entire Nikole Hannah-Jones affair has been the obstinate refusal of UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin to tell the campus community what happened and why. Thanks to the candid statement Hannah-Jones released after deciding to refuse UNC’s job…
BY MICHAEL GIVEL At many universities across the United States, a modern addition to central administrations has been some type of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program or office. At the University of Oklahoma (OU), where I am a professor of political science, our DEI program is known as the Office of Diversity, Equity,…
BY SYDNEY FREEMAN, JR., AND DEBORAH THORNE Results from student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are biased; the evidence is irrefutable. Students more harshly assess female instructors and instructors of color. Despite that, in the professional lives of instructors, SETs are extremely consequential—they are used to guide very high stakes personnel decisions such as whether one…
BY DANIEL MORRIS On June 11, 2021, the Purdue Board of Trustees passed a civics literacy requirement for undergraduates despite opposition from the faculty senate. Placed in the context of what happened at the University of North Carolina in April, when, as Lindsie Rank reports, “the board of trustees refused to approve the faculty’s recommendation…
BY CARY NELSON John Wilson has recently claimed that official anti-Zionist proclamations by academic departments are protected by academic freedom. “A statement is just a statement,” his Academe Blog post concludes, “It’s not an act of oppression.” Wilson was writing in opposition to my own June 3 essay in Inside Higher Education, “Is Academic Freedom…
BY AUDREY TRUSCHKE In early March 2021, I awoke to a social media barrage of misogynist and bigoted slurs, unhinged accusations, and threats to hurt me and my family. For a few days, I thought little about this. Since 2015, I have suffered online harassment from those who dislike my scholarship, especially a branch of…
BY HASSAN MELEHY By now, the decision by the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to refuse a tenured professorship to Nikole Hannah-Jones is a well-known story. One trustee, speaking anonymously, made clear that the motive was “politics.” In North Carolina we’re familiar with the right-wing policymaking that governs us: one of its major sources is…
BY SHARON BASKIND-WING For-profit colleges are not deserving of your tax dollars. By now, most of us have heard of the many controversies surrounding these for-profit institutions: that they don’t deliver on employment promises, have poorly qualified faculty, are overpriced, spend too much on a racist recruitment process, and create more debt than their graduates…
BY MILES D. MAYER I recently spoke with students and colleagues at Doane University regarding failing leadership in higher education. After many spirited discussions, the conclusion was that in higher education, as in the corporate world, some leaders are taking advantage of the times, making decisions that would otherwise call for discussion and approval of…