BY HANK REICHMAN As a Columbia alum (College ’69), participant in that university’s 1968 student rebellion, advocate for academic freedom and free expression rights, and as a Jew, I have followed developments at Columbia over the past few days with great interest. On Wednesday came the appearance by the co-chairs of the university’s Board of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I was scheduled to participate in a Round Table discussion of a recently published book, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History, edited by Eric Fure-Slocum and Claire Goldstene, in a session sponsored by the Labor and Working Class History Association at the Organization of American…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Wednesday, April 17 when faculty members nationwide will be observing a National Day of Action for Higher Education, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik is scheduled to testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee. On December 5, that committee heard testimony from the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday, February 26, I’ll be talking about the AAUP’s recent special investigation report, “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System,” online with John A. Douglass of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. Here’s the Center’s description of the event: In their self-proclaimed “war on…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m a historian of Russia by training, but I guess I didn’t realize that there’s apparently no double jeopardy rule, at least with respect to sentencing, in Russia. Turns out that I—and many others—celebrated too soon when back in December we learned of the release of renowned Marxist sociologist and university professor…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students. To briefly summarize, three weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP released a special investigative report, “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.” In interview after interview with faculty members in Florida, the investigating committee, which I co-chaired, “heard repeated complaints not only about the silence of their campus and system administrators but also about…
BY HANK REICHMAN Sociologist, antiwar activist, and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, has been released after paying a fine of 600,000 rubles ($6,600) for “justifying terrorism” in comments he made…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Thursday, the Board of Trustees of the College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y., voted to close the school at the end of the current academic year. Saint Rose President Marcia White confirmed the decision in a letter to the campus community. Between 500 and 600 college employees will lose their…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday’s election results in Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere have boosted the spirits of Democrats and progressives. One of the less widely publicized results, however, has been the stunning rebuke suffered by book-banners and transphobes like Moms for Liberty in school board elections in Iowa and elsewhere. In the past, Iowa school…