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…
BY HANK REICHMAN A group of 177 Stanford University professors from more than 40 departments, most in the physical and natural sciences, today made public a September 8 letter they sent to US Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for an end to a Trump administration program that sought to uncover alleged Chinese spies in American…
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…
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…
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…
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…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP, joined by more than 90 other groups, issued a powerful “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” And, of course, it’s not only legislation. The continuing controversy over the failure of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees to approve a…
BY HANK REICHMAN In an unprecedented move, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors has refused to re-appoint a respected law professor to the University of North Carolina Press Board of Governors. The reason seems to be the professor’s public statements on the legality of the UNC System’s controversial handling of the Silent…