BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT, ALTHA CRAVEY, AND JAY M. SMITH Nearly three months after the Confederate statue was toppled by activists, “Silent Sam” continues to roil the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite the controversy’s campus-specific particularities, the questions it raises are emblematic of the issues confronting many campuses in our age of…
BY ANNE SISSON RUNYAN As Committee W (the AAUP’s Committee on the Women in the Academic Profession) marks its hundredth year since its founding, it is worth reflecting on its role in the age of intersectionality. The rise of feminist intersectional scholarship and activism discussed in my piece on “What is Intersectionality and Why Does…
BY RANA JALEEL AND HANK REICHMAN In October, we learned that the Trump administration is considering a new legal definition of gender under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Gender would be narrowly defined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable” as…
BY ANI KOKOBOBO Guest Blogger Ani Kokobobo is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Slavic Department, at the University of Kansas as well as Editor, Tolstoy Studies Journal. I recently gave a lecture about Leo Tolstoy’s views on sexuality, which was inspired by the contemporary #metoo movement. At the end, a faculty member from the host university…
BY DAVID HILDEBRANDT I am studying the work life of adjunct faculty. You are invited to participate in this research if: You work as an adjunct faculty member. Your place of work is based in the United States of America. This research will help us understand the work life of adjunct faculty. We need your…
BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, STANFORD UNIVERSITY The punishment of John Cheney-Lippold, a University of Michigan professor who declined to write a letter of recommendation for a student who wished to study in Israel, has grown in a particularly ugly and disturbing manner. Cheney-Lippold is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) that argues…
BY LEO WELCH In recent history, Illinois’ support for higher education has shown little growth and in fact has lagged far behind inflation. Susana Mendoza, Illinois Comptroller, released a report on September 20, 2018 on the Consequences of Illinois’ 2015-2017 Budget Impasse and Fiscal Outlook. The full report includes the background and history of Illinois’…
BY MONICA OWENS In support of the launch of our national Education Not Privatization campaign this week we interviewed David Hughes, vice president of the AAUP-AFT chapter at Rutgers University to learn more about how the Rutgers chapter successfully organized to defend academic freedom and exercised oversight of online offerings in the Rutgers-Pearson eCollege contract.…
BY MONICA OWENS Privatization of online higher education is on the rise. For-profit online education corporations like Academic Partnerships, Kaplan, Wiley, Pearson, and Blackboard contract with public and private nonprofit institutions to provide digital platforms for educational content, recruit students, manage enrollment, facilitate the development of course materials, and more. While the use of digital…
BY ED BURMILA The following is reposted with permission from The Outline. Ed Burmila is assistant professor of political science at Bradley University. The 2014 right-wing fever dream of a film God’s Not Dead, a fantasy version of higher education for young adults raised on the Left Behind series, is a comic masterpiece, at least…