Updates from the Colorado Conference

BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE Fort Lewis College’s AAUP chapter registered a victory in March when President Dene Thomas announced that no faculty no tenured or tenure-track people will be eliminated as part of proposed FLC budget reductions.  Her decision followed an FLC-AAUP analysis of the proposed budget that demonstrated cuts could be achieved without sacrificing…

Teacher Strikes in Colorado: Law and Reality

BY RAY HOGLER Teachers from various state school districts rallied in Denver on April 26-27, 2108, to demand increases in pay and benefits. Most affected districts chose to cancel classes on those days rather than attempting to cope with the walkouts. In Fort Collins, Poudre School District Superintendent Sandra Smyser declared that “teachers’ actions are…

NTTF Reform and Tenure

BY STEVE MUMME It was a landmark moment when Colorado State’s faculty council voted to endorse the Committee on the Responsibilities and Academic Standing of Faculty’s (CoRSAF’s) proposal  establishing “contract” faculty appointments for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) on campus. The new appointment type effectively brings those faculty out of the shadows and into the mainstream…

Y’ALL Statement Regarding the J.D. Vance Roundtable at the Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting

BY MEMBERS OF YOUNG APPALACHIAN LEADERS AND LEARNERS The guest bloggers, the below-signed members of Y’ALL, are members of the Appalachian Studies Association. This statement was presented to the membership as a whole. Context On Thursday, April 12th, members of Y’ALL (Young Appalachian Leaders and Learners) met to discuss J.D. Vance’s invited participation in a…

Newfield on the Proposed Cuts at Stevens Point, Part II

BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a member of the Academe advisory board.  Part I of this two-part series may be found here.  Responding to Bulk Cuts in Qualitative Fields: the…

The Plight of University Presses

BY STEVEN LUBET Guest blogger Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University and the author most recently of Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters (Oxford University Press, 2017). The Kentucky General Assembly recently passed a budget that reduces funding for higher education by 6.25 percent, and will require cuts of as much as…

Should we limit expression in our classrooms? If so, why?

BY ELIZABETH J. MEYER The topic of free speech on college campuses has been an important one and one that continues to be debated particularly in the wake of Milo Yiannopolis’s speaking tour last year and the 2016 presidential election. With groups like Turning Point USA pouring significant resources into sponsoring conservative speakers like Ann…