When the Dean Quashes Your Class: An Interview with Jay Smith
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…
Seeking Authors for Chapters in Book on Teaching Social Justice
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,…
A Postscript to “One Faculty and Academic Governance”
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…
Bumper Stickers About Governance at Small Colleges
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,…
How Legislative Efforts to Define Antisemitism Threaten Academic Freedom
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…
Purdue Grabs Kaplan: How Should Faculty Respond?
Mitch Daniels Wants to Sell the Soul of Public Education: Purdue Faculty Must Stop Him
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…
Authors Ward Churchill, Alice Dreger featured speakers at Academic Freedom Symposium, CU-Boulder
BY DON ERON Guest blogger Don Eron is a retired University of Colorado Boulder writing instructor and a member of the national AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. As higher education budgets shrink, partisanship increases, and social media magnify and distort messages, the state of academic freedom in Colorado and across the country will be…
Centering the Experiences of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members of Color
BY RYAN RIDEAU Guest blogger Ryan Rideau is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Higher Education program at Virginia Tech. I am currently working on my dissertation that examines the experiences of non-tenure track faculty members of color at predominantly White institutions of higher education. I am seeking participants for this dissertation. Participation in this study…