The following letter by Michael Rothberg originally appeared on his website. Rothberg is the Head of the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. He is the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000) and Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in…
By Nicholas Burbules, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I want to thank Mr. Wilson for sending us his posting on “Shared Governance and the Salaita Case” and inviting us to respond. Joyce Tolliver and I do call for an honest debate in our editorial. We fully accept that there are serious, principled positions on different…
The following is a statement by the Illinois AAUP Committee A on the case of Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors supports the honoring of the appointment of Steven G. Salaita in the American Indian…
Guest blogger Phyllis Wentworth is an Associate Professor in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. In a couple of weeks, my 18 year old son will be headed off to his first year of college. Ever the optimist, he tells everyone who inquires that he is…
Guest Blogger Seth Kahn is a faculty member (composition and rhetoric; critical pedagogy; qualitative research methods) at West Chester University of PA. He’s a peace activist and serves in several positions for the PASSHE schools’ faculty union (APSCUF). If you’re a Facebook friend or in my G+ network, you’ve seen me post a link to this petition calling for…
Sean Kennedy is a doctoral student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The PSC is in the midst of negotiating a new contract with CUNY. Kennedy originally wrote and posted this letter in mid-May. It now has nearly 200 signatories. Dear Barbara— I write as a union member and CUNY contingent…
By Bill Ayers (reposted from billayers.org) The call for “trigger warnings”—a recent censorious trend gaining traction on American college campuses—is designed to alert students of any potentially troubling, unsettling, or upsetting course materials. The impetus is benign enough, and the context includes the important recent mobilization to deal seriously with epidemic levels of rape and…
Guest poster Michael McDevitt is professor in journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. He conducts research in political communication and is working on a book, Where Ideas Go to Die: Anti-Intellectualism in American Journalism. His e-mail address is mike.mcdevitt@colorado.edu. The killing of a school is never pleasant—especially when it’s your school—but a…
Guest blogger Alisa Roost is assistant professor of the humanities at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx. Her e-mail address is aroost@hostos.cuny.edu. Here, Roost writes about “Supporting Veterans in the Classroom,” an article that appeared recently in Academe. The United States has benefited from an all-volunteer military with both more professionalism in the armed…
By Donald Lazere I sent out the following “Appeal” last February. I received no response from ACTA and a form rejection from the Center for the American University. NAS posted it on its home page, where it received two evasive responses. George Leef, head of the Pope Center, answered with a review of my book.…