BY HANK REICHMAN If there’s a better examplar of the higher education administrative establishment’s failures than E. Gordon Gee, I can’t think of one. Gee, who has held more university presidencies than any other American, has cut an extraordinary path of scandal and negligence pretty much everywhere he’s been. Yet he continues not only to…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m old enough to remember when the venerable business magazine Forbes used to identify itself as a “capitalist tool.” The publication, now run by former flat-tax presidential candidate Steve Forbes, is unsurprisingly conservative and Republican in its editorial policies. Forbes endorsed Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2024. And while Forbes the magazine has…
BY HANK REICHMAN Dr. Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer in mathematics and philosophy at California State University, Channel Islands, was beaten and arrested on Thursday, July 10, in an ICE raid on a legal cannabis farm in Camarillo, California, that also resulted in the death of a worker who fell from a roof while fleeing immigration…
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,…