BY JAY SMITH My article in the current issue of Academe, “Academic Freedom, Meet Big-Time College Sports,” tells a story about academic censorship. It provides a blow-by-blow account of the process whereby deans in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill intervened in departmental course scheduling in order to prevent the teaching of…
BY LUIS I. PRÁDANOS Every time I mention the obvious in a classroom—that most industrial economic activities deplete energy and materials and, therefore, constant economic growth in the context of a limited biosphere is a biophysical impossibility—I am moved by some students’ honest reactions. Their response will be some variation of “That makes sense. Why did nobody tell us before that as the global economy grows, the living systems of…
BY NEAL H. HUTCHENS Today, Neal H. Hutchens, member of the AAUP Litigation Committee and professor of Higher Education at the University of Mississippi, published this column in Hechinger Report: Last week, the idea of a potential move by the U.S. Department of Justice received swift pushback from supporters of affirmative action in higher education,…
BY RUSSELL RICKFORD This article was originally published by Black Perspectives, and is reposted here with permission. Black Perspectives is a project of the African-American Intellectual History Society. Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the…
BY IRENE NGUN The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is conducting a study of the impacts of gender-related experiences on women in science, engineering, and medical fields, and they have contracted with RTI International to gather information for the study. RTI International plans to conduct one-hour, in-depth telephone interviews with approximately 40 women…
BY THE AAUP COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDENTS Over the past nine months, graduate employees at private universities have faced vicious campaigns and legal challenges from university administrations as they have attempted to exercise their freedom to join together in a union to negotiate collectively for better working conditions. The American Association of University…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT On Defending UNC-Law School’s Civil Rights Center Against a Political Attack North Carolina has, in recent years, been subject to increased political meddling in its higher education system. After the attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Poverty Center, the Board of Governors has now trained its sights…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Interviewer Michael C. Behrent of Appalachian State University is vice president of the AAUP’s North Carolina state conference. Several months ago, something strange happened to Jay Smith, a tenured professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s History Department: he found out that his dean made his chair cancel a class he had been scheduled…
BY SARAH BURNS GILCHRIST ABC-CLIO has shown interest in my proposal for a collaborative publication focused on teaching Social Justice in the classroom. They would like to have a list of interested co-authors (in the form of a Table of Contents) before they grant a contract. The deadline for manuscript submission will be April 10th,…