I Wish I Had Written That

BY HANK REICHMAN This week, within a span of 24 hours, I read two newly published articles that so coincided with my recent thinking and writing (and, at least implicitly, with each other) that I immediately felt a bit jealous that I hadn’t written them.  Of course, there’s plenty of space for multiple voices arguing…

Coronavirus

This Could Be Big!

BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of a week of statewide campus protest against poor COVID-19 practices at Georgia’s state universities and colleges, more than 50 faculty members at the University of Georgia, full and associate professors in the life sciences, have announced that they will require masks in their classrooms, in violation of the…

Syracuse Gets it Right Again

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday, Kent Syverud, Chancellor and President of Syracuse University, and David Van Slyke, Dean of that institution’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, issued a statement in response to controversy that had emerged around a faculty member’s comments about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  The faculty member, a tenure-track assistant…

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

BY HANK REICHMAN Last week historian Garrett Felber reached a confidential settlement with the University of Mississippi, where in December 2020 his appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor was not renewed under abrupt and alarming circumstances.  “I was terminated because of my public statements, including legitimate criticisms of the University.  Rather than go to court…

Defining Academic Freedom

BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of an op-ed piece published July 20, 2021 in the San Francisco Chronicle.  From the nationwide spate of legislation targeting “critical race theory” to the recent controversy at Cal State East Bay, where crude and unscholarly claims about the “intelligence” of racial groups were included in an…

Fire raging in a forest at night.

Playing With FIRE

BY HANK REICHMAN The headline on Inside Higher Ed was provocative, if not downright inflammatory: “AAUP vs. FIRE.”  But rather than the knockdown drag-out contest between two national organizations celebrated for their defense of intellectual freedom implied by the headline, the article that followed offered something much more modest. The AAUP chapter at the University…

page showing dictionary definition of the word "legislation" highlighted in pink with a pink highlighter poised at the end of the word

On Lukianoff’s 13 Points

BY HANK REICHMAN Greg Lukianoff, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and three co-authors have written a piece, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” discussing the avalanche of proposed and, in some cases, already enacted legislation governing classroom instruction in both higher ed and…