By Jeremi Suri, professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. This essay originally appeared in the Dallas Morning-News. Universities provided the fuel for American economic growth and global leadership in the last century. This is particularly true for public universities. They educated more businesspeople, governors, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, teachers…
Below is an open letter from Department Heads at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to incoming president Timothy Killeen about the Salaita case. A UIUC faculty committee report on the case is expected later this month, and on Dec. 3 a forum on the Salaita case, academic freedom, and civility will be held at…
By Craig Vasey As the new chair of the AAUP’s Committee on Teaching, Research, and Publications, I asked the committee members what we could do this year to be of service to the AAUP and to the profession. One theme that emerged was the impact that teaching evaluations can have on careers; we reviewed the…
By Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy Project The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are best-known for donating millions to the election campaigns of Tea Party candidates and others committed to fighting regulation of business and to protecting the oil and gas industries from efforts to combat climate change. It turns out that Charles Koch, through…
Last week, Robin Meade won a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a district court decision that had dismissed her lawsuit against Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. By Robin Meade The police chief handed me the envelope stating he had no idea what was in it, he was just…
Guest blogger Sister Mary Reap, IHM, is President of Elms College, Chicopee, MA, She also served as President of Marywood University, Scranton, PA, for 19 years. As the economy continues to fluctuate, the demands of the workforce have followed suit. In order to compete for jobs, or to stay current with skills needed for their current…
Guest blogger Nicholas H. Wolfinger (@NickWolfinger) is a professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. Academia doesn’t always do a good job of communicating its findings to the outside world. Far too often, interesting and important results never get farther than the pages of a scholarly journal, in all…
By Sharon Ann Musher In the aftermath of the board of trustees’ vote at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to terminate Steven Salaita’s conditional job offer, the scholar of Arab-American literature is pursuing two options. He has engaged the Center for Constitution Rights to sue the university. And he has requested that the American…
Rudy Fichtenbaum, President American Association of University Professors While cases such as the ones I have been discussing receive lots of public attention, they pale in comparison a number of other threats to academic freedom, mainly the attacks on public sector unions and growing use of faculty who are hired on contingent contracts. In the…
Guest blogger Michael Behrent is an associate professor of history at Appalachian State University and President of the ASU Chapter of the AAUP. This was first published as a letter-to-the-editor of The Appalachian. College is one of the most thrilling times of your life: a time to learn, discover yourself, and forge lifelong relationships. If this is…