BY HANK REICHMAN Over two years ago, on November 3, 2017, I posted an item to this blog about the ordeal of Georgette Fleischer, a Barnard College adjunct writing instructor who was summarily dismissed from her position after 17 years of successful teaching. Here, from that post, is the background: For seventeen years Georgette Fleischer…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this month the AAUP released an important statement, In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, prepared by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The statement has now been endorsed by these organizations: American Federation of Teachers American Historical Association Association of American Colleges and Universities American Society of Journalists and…
BY HANK REICHMAN On March 21, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he claimed would require colleges and universities to uphold free speech or risk forfeiting federal support. When Trump first announced his intent to issue the order at the Conservative Political Action Conference the AAUP and eleven other groups issued a…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a sudden and unexpected move, Heather Hiles, president and CEO of Calbright College, California’s new online community college, has resigned after less than a year on the job. The college’s board voted unanimously yesterday to accept a separation agreement with Hiles, who will step down effective March 31 but be on…
BY HANK REICHMAN Over the past decade Audrey Watters has proven to be one of our most knowledgeable, insightful, critical, and, well, just plain entertaining commentators on educational technology. Her Hack Education blog is a must-read for anyone who cares about teaching and learning at any level. One terrific feature of that blog has been…
BY HANK REICHMAN In my October Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture at the University of Michigan I argued that “the gravest challenge to academic freedom, one that exacerbates all others, [is] the steady erosion of the tenure system and the concomitant and explosive expansion of contingent, frequently part-time faculty employment,” what some have labeled “adjunctification.” Part-time…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today the AAUP released a statement, In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, prepared by the association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in October and approved by the AAUP Council a month later. An email signed by me was sent to all AAUP members announcing the release this morning. The…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Temple University professor Sara Goldrick-Rab probably knows and understands more about how real students today pay for — or are financially incapable of paying for — higher education than anyone else. Her book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, is one of the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following are excerpts from an article on the website of Reason magazine. To read the full piece go here. A vocational college in La Crosse, Wisconsin, spent more than $100,000 investigating one of its instructors for allegedly saying the local police department was “full of racists.” The school is Western…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN More than seven hundred scholars in Turkey have been prosecuted on criminal charges solely because they signed a peace petition calling for a halt to the fighting between Turkish forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and an end to what they described as the “deliberate massacre and deportation…