POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On July 7, the executive committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter issued a statement in solidarity with Research Associates and Postdocs United at Penn (RAPUP) which is seeking union recognition in an NLRB election scheduled for July 16-17. In addition, the committee released an open letter to the Penn…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the winter 2025 issue of Academe, which I guest-edited, exiled Russian scholars Ilya Matveev and Evgeny Roshchin surveyed the state of academic freedom in that country in the aftermath of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (The issue also includes essays by Ukrainian scholars.) Unsurprisingly, they reported that Security agencies and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Jay Bhattacharya, appointed by President Trump to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH), first gained national notoriety as a principal author of the so-called Great Barrington Declaration of 2020, which condemned the NIH for ignoring calls to mostly cease pandemic-related precautions. Now over 300 NIH staff have published the Bethesda…
BY HANK REICHMAN On May 25, the Black Flag Action Group, formed by scholars at Israeli colleges and universities, issued an important Urgent Call to Action demanding the heads of Israeli academic institutions “speak out” and “act immediately” to stop the war on Gaza. By May 31 the Call had collected over 1,400 signatures. As…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued yesterday in response to a decision earlier that day by the Department of Homeland Security to revoke Harvard University’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, effectively removing over seven thousand students from campus. In a press release DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the American Constitution Society hosted a video conversation on academic freedom with Andrew Manuel Crespo, the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law and Executive Faculty Director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard University. Professor Crespo is an AAUP member who is serving as general counsel…
BY HANK REICHMAN The all-but-finalized departure of University of Michigan President Santa Ono for the same, yet even more lucrative, position at the University of Florida, where his apparent hostility to student protest (even when expressed via democratic referendum) and eagerness to abandon DEI programs made him an ideal candidate to serve Governor Ron DeSantis,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement is republished here with permission of its organizers. The statement with a regularly updated list of signatories may also be found here. As Jewish faculty and staff at Northwestern University, we write today to defend the values of academic freedom, pluralism and independence that animate Northwestern and undergird…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following resolutions from the Academic Council of the University of California Academic Senate and from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Academic Senate were published this week. Their calls for unity and action should be widely circulated and embraced. Academic Council Statement: The Defense of the University April 8, 2025 Higher…
BY HANK REICHMAN Kenneth Stern is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, which works to increase the serious study of human hatred, and ways to combat it. Before that he directed the Justus and Karin Rosenberg Foundation and before that he was for 25 years director of the American Jewish…