BY FRANK RITTER ORCID is an ID number authors can request from a consortium, primarily created by for-profit publishers. It is nominally free and intended to be unique to individuals. It is designed to be a database primary key to tie all records of an individual together. Using ORCID is a conflict of interest because…
BY DALE E. MILLER In a recent op-ed in The Hill titled “Our Universities Need Both Free Speech and Diversity Protections to Succeed,” Austin Sarat makes a vital point: “Free speech advocates should welcome . . . efforts to make colleges and universities more diverse and inclusive.” Yet he omits an equally vital point: The…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Following is the guest editor’s introduction to the winter 2025 issue of Academe, out this week. The full table of contents for the issue is available here. We live in a world at war. According to the United Nations, the current century can be characterized as “a new era of conflict and violence.” The…
BY JAMES VERNON Ed. note: On Monday, February 3, Michael Burawoy, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and lifelong activist, was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street near his Oakland home. We in the AAUP join with our colleagues at Berkeley and world-wide in mourning his untimely…
BY FELICITY JONES The First Reconstruction set us free. Have courage. The Second Reconstruction was meant to let us be. Hope is not lost. The Third Reconstruction is ours to seize. This is your country too. Dear Students of the Third Reconstruction: Changes are happening quickly in federal and state governments across the United States.…
BY ANDREA BROWER A version of this post was also published at Common Dreams. For many months before Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life. NYU suspended eleven students who were part of a peaceful flyer distribution and sit-in, including students who…
BY DAVID MOSHMAN On January 6, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), members voted 428 to 88 in support of a “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza.” The resolution noted that Israel has killed hundreds of teachers and professors and has destroyed eighty percent of Gaza’s schools, all its university campuses,…
BY DAVID M. RABBAN In the process of writing my recently published book, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press, 2024), I increasingly realized that the AAUP’s treatment of academic freedom as a professional norm provides a revealing counterpart to the judicial development of academic freedom as a First Amendment…
BY KATHERINE FRANKE The following is the text of a statement issued on January 10, 2025 by Katherine Franke, formerly the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University. It is posted here with her permission For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested…
BY RENEE L. BOWLING AND MATTHEW J. MAYHEW Some good news for the new year: Over three hundred campuses have partnered with the Interfaith Spiritual, Religious, and Secular (INSPIRES) Index to assess and improve their campus climates for diverse worldviews. Encouragingly, many campuses participate repeatedly in the annual research-based assessment and share their names or…