The University of Akron Hit List: Who Are We?
BY SUE RAMLO On July 15th, 2020, our worlds turned upside down. Fear filled discussions about a faculty cut list had been circulating for more than a few months. It seemed as if every faculty member assumed that they were on that list of faculty to be laid off. Faculty were brooding, panicking, and anxious,…
COVID-19 Should Encourage Creative Reform in Higher Education
BY JOHN McNAY Colleges and universities are being pummeled by the financial impact of the coronavirus. Every day brings more bad news: cuts to state support, large deficits, questionable fall enrollment, and questions as to what degree campuses will be open. Yet, amid the human tragedy, we should see the crisis as an opportunity for…
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Files Suit Against Athletics’ “Financial Black Hole”
The following is a press release from the Rutgers AAUP-AFT chapter. Rutgers AAUP-AFT has filed a lawsuit to force the Rutgers University administration to come clean about the huge sums of money it funnels to an athletics program that continually loses money. The suit, filed last Friday, asks a superior court judge to require the…
Faculty, Fearing COVID-19 Community Spread, Call for Online-Only Fall Semester
BY MARCUS ALFRED, ERIN D. CHAPMAN, PHILIP N. COHEN, HEIDI LI FELDMAN, BETHANY L. LETIECQ, BINH Q. TRAN, AND JULIA G. YOUNG We are professors at universities across the DC metropolitan area. And, like so many of our colleagues nationwide, we fear our communities will not be safe if DC-area colleges and universities open as…
Anti-Faculty Coup at National University
BY ALARMED FACULTY MEMBERS AT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY This spring and summer of COVID has witnessed a perhaps unprecedented assault on faculty rights, as institution after institution, claiming some sort of exigency, have laid off both contingent and tenured faculty members, restructured programs, and short-circuited established institutions of shared governance. In many cases the challenges are…
The Promise of Princeton’s Racism Committee Proposal
BY JENNIFER RUTH Last week on Academe Blog, John Wilson argued that one idea proposed by Princeton faculty members who wrote a July 4 letter calling for anti-racist reforms is misguided. The signatories ask Princeton administrators to “constitute a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents,…
Colleges Should Offer a Pass-Fail Option This Fall
BY KIMBERLY BERNHARDT Like many of my colleagues across the country, I am unsure whether I will be teaching face-to-face, online, or hybrid courses this fall. While I hope to adapt my teaching to whatever model is necessary to serve students, I am not confident that our current pedagogical framework—in which students work throughout the…
Ending Institutional Racism in Higher Education
BY MICHAEL A. DOVER Recently Danielle Smith, executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, asked, “If you only have fifteen minutes to talk to a brand-new-to-the-topic mostly wealthy, white audience about racism/white supremacy culture and how this plays out in the organizations they lead . . . what would…
Navigating the Waters of Teaching Culturally Responsive Practices
BY MEREDITH McCOOL When I first heard Stephanie O’Neill’s NPR story “Coronavirus Has Upended Our World. It’s OK to Grieve,” it helped me consider the range of emotions I was experiencing. Stress from the sudden changes. Disappointment from missed opportunities. However, the full weight of grief did not hit me until I began to consider…