POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued on June 3 by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) stands in solidarity with communities around the world protesting racism, injustice, and inequality. While the ongoing demonstrations have been triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The American Historical Association (AHA) has issued a statement urging a reckoning with the United States’ deplorable record of violence against African Americans, a record that stretches back centuries. The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers stands within this sordid national tradition of racist violence. It…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I posted to this blog a piece that compared the current protests against police violence with the urban rebellions of prior years, especially the 1960s. In it I wrote that “the looting, arson, and window-smashing that have marred the overwhelmingly peaceful protests . . . may have been carried out by…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday night, June 1, through the following morning the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) crowded protesters arrested in downtown Los Angeles and Westwood into sheriff’s buses and brought them to Jackie Robinson Stadium. Located off-campus, on the grounds of the Los Angeles Veterans Health Administration and seating just 1,820, it…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I recorded a podcast with the New American Baccalaureate Project (NAB) in which we discussed academic freedom, both generally and in the context of the extraordinary developments of the past month. It has now been posted to NAB’s website. Here’s how they describe it: As protests spread across the US…
BY HANK REICHMAN No right-thinking person can fail to condemn the looting, arson, and window-smashing that have marred the overwhelmingly peaceful protests that have swept the nation for the past week in the wake of the brutal slaying of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. These criminal actions may have been carried out by a…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Thursday, May 28, a website called Israel-Academia-Monitor published an “editorial note” entitled “AAUP Losing Credibility over the Palestinian-Israeli Dispute.” It begins: The prestigious academic organization, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), is losing credibility. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has helped to shape the standards and procedures of higher…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two articles from today’s (London) Times Higher Education discuss how higher education systems in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, which have embraced privatization and corporatization, and systems in continental Europe, which have largely retained the public funding model, are faring in the face of the challenges posed by the fiscal implications…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Science magazine reports the following: Seventy-seven U.S. scientists who have won a Nobel Prize [on May 21] asked Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, to “act urgently” to review a controversial NIH decision to terminate a grant that supported…
BY HANK REICHMAN No sooner had I posted my COVID-19 and Higher Education annotated reading list, than two pieces appeared that also deserve attention. The first is by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University. Her book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, is…