BY JOHN T. MCNAY The growing obsession on the part of college and university administrations with secrecy, which I address in my recent Academe article, “Ohio AAUP Chapters Contend with Secretive Searches,” is indicative of a larger issue. The continual adoption of corporate models is undermining the academic mission at our institutions. Even corporations, when…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ, SAMANTHA PARSONS, AND GUS THOMSON We did it! We organized. We educated. We advocated. And with student activism, solidarity, and a collaborative spirit, we collectively achieved a huge victory for transparency at George Mason University (GMU). Last week, Provost Wu announced at our GMU Faculty Senate meeting that we will institute a…
BY EMILY M.S. HOUH An investigation by the AAUP released today found unacceptable conditions for academic governance at Vermont Law School (VLS). The investigation was launched in response to the VLS administration’s action to “restructure” the faculty in order to address financial challenges. The “restructuring” included lowering salaries, radically reducing the number of full-time positions…
BY SAMANTHA PARSONS, DAVID RAPACH, AND BONNIE WILSON The Academic Capture Warning System (ACWS) is a repository of information on clear violations of well-accepted academic norms involving financial donations to institutions of higher education. Such violations jeopardize the independence and integrity of academic research. Key purposes of the ACWS are to: • raise awareness and…
BY MATTHEW DEAN HINDMAN AND RYAN SAYLOR Matthew Dean Hindman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. Ryan Saylor is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. Since 1920, the AAUP has championed shared governance in higher education; you can even complete its questionnaire to gauge how your…
BY AARON R. HANLON Aaron R. Hanlon is Assistant Professor of English at Colby College The public is right to care about what kinds of values our institutions of higher education are (and are not) imparting to students. People are likely to disagree over which particular values they think colleges and universities ought to emphasize—in…
BY CHRISTOPHER SIMEONE Registration for the 2019 AAUP/AAUP-CBC Summer Institute is open! Join us July 25–28 at Roosevelt University in Chicago. View the complete program and reserve your spot. Summer Institute is a four-day workshop series that connects you with academic activists and develops your skills so you can make change on campus. Defend the…
BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN In late March 2019 at UNC–Chapel Hill, the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East and Islamic Studies held a conference titled “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities.” The list of scholars, journalists, performers, artists, and films can be found here. On the first night of the conference, Tamer Nafar, a rapper, actor,…
BY FRANK D. LOMONTE Headhunters for university presidential searches make their six-figure commissions by promising trustees they’ll deliver an efficient search with high-quality candidates. What they’ve delivered to the University of Colorado is a slow-motion train wreck, as president-elect Mark Kennedy struggles to salvage his candidacy after a “ready-fire-aim” search process in which trustees admit…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY When some conservative media outlet contacts you, with a picture of a lecture slide or assignment from your course, implying a bias against their conservative agenda, do you respond? If so, how? I am not imagining a hypothetical scenario. The headlines of conservative websites such as Campus Reform and College Fix suggest…