BY RICHARD J. REDDICK AND LISA L. MOORE “Have you gotten the shot?” It’s springtime, and those of us in higher education are beginning to cautiously imagine some kind of return to campus later this year. Many are calling not for a return to “normal” but to a revisioning of our habits, assumptions, and structures—many…
BY KIRA T. LAWRENCE As a climate scientist, I’ve watched in disbelief as decades of denial and can-kicking have resulted in the leading edge of the climate crisis wreaking havoc across the world. For years, I have felt like I’ve been aboard the carbon train with the rest of humanity, telling passengers to brace for…
BY GINA TIGRI Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? This question was famously asked numerous times in the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) amid the anti-Communist frenzy known as the Red Scare in the McCarthy era. A new higher education bill was recently…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY When the AAUP made funds available to all state conferences last year, I, as the state president of the Georgia conference, had an idea. This academic year we have had six presidents in our state’s public higher education system, which includes twenty-six institutions, announce that they were leaving. When we received word…
BY GREGORY E. RUTLEDGE The current state of the union—recurring mass shootings, raging white supremacy (manifested in voter disenfranchisement, anti-immigrant hostility, violence against Asian Americans, and efforts to foment a racial civil war), a pandemic, outrageously foxy lying by US senators and representatives, and increasing economic desperation alongside massive wealth gains by billionaires—and the complacency…
BY ALICE BROWN During Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Howard Dean spoke about her plan to set aside $25 billion for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and to make public universities tuition-free. Afterwards, I asked, “What are Hillary’s plans for the small private colleges scattered across the country, most in rural regions?” His response…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Last summer, even as COVID-19 cases were surging, university leaders in North Carolina tried to engineer a return to normal by August 2020. It famously failed. Soon after the start of the semester yielded a burst of COVID-19 clusters, the state’s two flagship universities, UNC–Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, shut…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AAUP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Dear Colleagues, Are you troubled by the direction that the University of Maryland has headed in recent years? We are. In March 2021, we relaunched the University of Maryland Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (UMD AAUP) because we believe a different university is possible.…
BY PAUL CAMPOS The following is reposted with permission from the Lawyers, Guns, and Money blog. Paul Campos is Professor of Law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Here are some numbers that I hope speak for themselves. ALL FIGURES ARE INFLATION-ADJUSTED INTO CONSTANT 2018 OR 2019 DOLLARS. Salary of full-time faculty at American colleges…
BY STEVEN LUBET Hank Reichman’s recent post on the Bandy Lee case at the Yale Medical School raises an important point that deserves some further consideration. To recap, Dr. Lee has sued Yale for firing her from an unpaid, part-time position in the psychiatry department. Lee’s offense involved tweeting about the mental health of Donald…