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Dismissal Following A Twitter Storm

BY FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN I had been elected in early May 2017 to the position of director of the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Montclair State University NJ. after the previous director stepped down without completing her three-year term, and after someone else who was elected to succeed her also stepped down, within…

U. of Chicago Administration Stands Against Free Expression for its Graduate Students

BY YALI AMIT, ANTON FORD, ELAINE HADLEY, AND DENIS HIRSCHFELDT The following piece was written by these members of the University of Chicago faculty:  Yali Amit, Professor of Statistics; Anton Ford, Associate Professor of Philosophy; Elaine Hadley, Professor of English; and Denis Hirschfeldt, Professor of Mathematics. Graduate student employees at the university will vote tomorrow…

The Value of Grievance Procedures

BY MIKE MAUER Our colleagues at Montgomery College are in the process of learning, first hand, the value of a modification to their collective bargaining agreement that they won in the last round of negotiations. For decades, the chapter kept winning stronger and stronger protections for faculty at the only unionized college in the two-year…

What College Is About: Reflections On The American University Bias Incident

BY LARA SCHWARTZ This blog post originally appeared on the Huffington Post on September 27 and appears here with the author’s permission. Lara Schwartz teaches law and government at American University School of Public Affairs On the night of Sept. 26, shortly after historian Ibram Kendi introduced American University’s new Antiracist Research and Policy Center, an as-yet unidentified man hung posters of…

Berkeley Disconnect

BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Michael Meranze is professor of history at UCLA.  He co-authors Remaking the University with Christopher Newfield, professor of english at UC, Santa Barbara. The farce that was MiloFest has now frittered away into failure.  Of course, that will not be…

Indulging Conservatives?

BY EVA VON DASSOW Guest blogger Eva von Dassow is Associate Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and AAUP Chapter Chair at the University of Minnesota. Since when is demanding that public funds be expended to indulge your wishes a conservative idea? The student group calling itself the Berkeley Patriot and the media company of…

Using Free Speech to Stifle Free Speech

BY DAVID MOSHMAN People often use their freedom of speech to disrupt the speech of others, especially on college campuses in recent years. Of course people have a right to protest, provided they are sufficiently quiet, brief, or distant so as not to prevent the speaker from being heard. On August 25, University of Nebraska–Lincoln…

To Hell in a Hand Basket: GE and Other Fiascos

BY HARRY HELLENBRAND Harry Hellenbrand served for many years as provost and interim president at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) following a distinguished career as a faculty member, academic senator, department chair and dean at CSU campuses.  The essay below addresses changes in curriculum imposed on the CSU’s 23 campuses and their faculty by the…