Should instructors allow students in their classes to use electronic media devices — laptops, tablets, smartphones — in class? That question has often been a hot one among teaching faculty and opinions vary widely. Recently Clay Shirky, who teaches telecommunications and journalism at New York University, decided after many years to ban the devices from…
Yesterday I posted a statement by the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), issued in response to a September 5 message to the UC Berkeley campus from Chancellor Nicholas Dirks that called “civility” and free speech “two sides of a single coin.” Also yesterday Dirks sent an email message to faculty, staff and…
The following is the text of a statement issued on September 11 by the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA): On Friday Sept. 5, Chancellor Dirks of UC Berkeley circulated an open statement to his campus community that sought to define the limits of appropriate debate at Berkeley. Issued as the campus approaches…
The following is the text of an open letter to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees from Safiya Umoja Noble, Assistant Professor, UCLA, and former faculty member, student, and development staff member at UIUC. The letter appeared on Noble’s blog. Dear University of Illinois Board of Trustees Members, I spent the last eight years…
Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times is one of my favorite newspaper columnists. This week he ran an excellent piece on what I’ve started calling the emerging “civility doctrine” in higher education. Here are some excerpts: When someone in power praises the principle of free speech, it’s wise to be on the lookout for weasel…
Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog that asked, “Is ‘Incivility’ the New Communism?” In that post I suggested that recent attempts to enforce standards of “civility” at colleges and universities, often, as in the Salaita case at Illinois and the Marzec incident in Ohio, in response to pro-Palestinian expression, recalled previous…
During the great red scare of the late 1940s and 1950s, many otherwise “liberal” politicians and, sadly, more than a few academics argued that faculty members who were Communists (actually in practice those who declined to publicly state they were not Communists or even those who refused to denounce others) forfeited the right to academic…
This report was drafted by a subcommittee of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in August 2014 and has been approved by Committee A. A current threat to academic freedom in the classroom comes from a demand that teachers provide warnings in advance if assigned material contains anything that might trigger difficult emotional responses…
The following is a media release issued today by the Rider University (New Jersey) AAUP: The faculty of Rider University is standing in solidarity at the beginning of the fall as contract negotiations, which started in the summer and continue with little progress being made. The administration has put forth draconian proposals that will negatively…
An interesting court decision involving faculty intellectual property came down last week. The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District ruled on August 26 that The University of Missouri System does not have to release course syllabi because they are protected by copyright laws. The ruling upheld a previous lower court decision. According to the appeals…