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,…
BY NICOLE MONNIER When my article on taking the “contingent” out of “contingent faculty” appeared in the recent issue of Academe, I was feeling the irony, and not the good kind. Because I had just learned that thirty-eight of my NTT Mizzou comrades were likely to lose their jobs for the next academic year. When…
BY AFSHAN JAFAR, SIMON FELDMAN, AND JOAN C. CHRISLER In the latest issue of Academe, we write about the importance of participating in academic governance, especially on small campuses. Our article, Hang Together or Hang Separately, lays out some of the obstacles to participation in governance and argues for the need to overcome them. Here,…
BY KENNETH S. STERN AND ERNST BENJAMIN This is a guest post by Kenneth S. Stern and Ernst Benjamin. Kenneth S. Stern is the Executive Director of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation, and a Fellow of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College (where he has taught a course on antisemitism as a Visiting…
BY BILL MULLEN Guest blogger Bill Mullen is a Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue. Last week, Purdue University purchased Kaplan University, a for-profit on-line entity owned by Graham Holdings Company, a corporate conglomerate and former owner of the Washington Post newspaper. Purdue says it plans to make Kaplan into a public University…