Standing with Professional Ethics

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday a group of faculty supporters of the BDS movement posted to this blog a statement, “Standing with John Cheney-Lippold,” which called on readers to support University of Michigan Professor Cheney-Lippold’s decision not to write a letter of recommendation for a student seeking to study for a semester in Israel.  They offer…

Targeted Harassment and the Kavanaugh Nomination

BY HANK REICHMAN Recently the AAUP and others have been calling attention to the growing phenomenon of targeted online (and direct) harassment of faculty members, which has become a major threat to the academic freedom of everyone in higher education.  In January 2017, the AAUP issued a statement noting how individual faculty members “have been…

Trump Once Again Attacks Science

BY HANK REICHMAN The Trump administration’s disregard for and assault on science have been well documented by the AAUP, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others.  Now President Trump himself and his FEMA administrator, Brock Long, have attacked the credibility of a study by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, which found…

Diversity and General Education in the CSU

BY HANK REICHMAN A little more than a year ago the Chancellor of the California State University system (CSU) issued two executive orders governing general education and remediation.  The directives, prepared and released without appropriate faculty input, were immediately controversial.  In October 2017, the California Faculty Association (CFA), an AAUP-affiliate representing over 27,000 CSU faculty…

“Out of the Shadows”: Non-Tenure-Track Faculty in Canada

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this month the Canadian Association of University Teachers released results of the first national survey of contract academic staff, which is what Canadian universities call faculty hired on contingent non-tenure-track appointments.  The findings of the report, Out of the Shadows: Experiences of Contract Academic Staff, will be familiar to U.S.…

Secrets, Scams, and Scandals

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN To restore the profession of teaching in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the Colorado Conference of the AAUP has released the first of a series of videos showcasing the mounting, explosive, labor exploitation issue facing the 13-college CCCS.  The video, Secrets, Scams, and Scandals: The Dirty Little Secrets of the…

Some Labor Day Reading

BY HANK REICHMAN Lacking any special insights or ideas that I wish to share in recognition of this first Labor Day since the infamous Janus decision, I thought I would instead call attention to some useful analyses of labor’s state published elsewhere today.  So what follows are excerpts from a number of different pieces from…

CAUT Opposes Ontario’s Campus “Free Speech” Diktat

BY HANK REICHMAN Ontario Conservative Premier Doug Ford has warned the province’s public universities and colleges they will face funding cuts if they fail to adopt free-speech policies that defend controversial speakers on campus. The government announced yesterday that it will give schools four months to design, implement and enforce wide-ranging free-speech policies.  Ford had promised…

Victory at Rutgers

BY HANK REICHMAN On Tuesday of this week the national AAUP delivered a letter to the leaders of the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT chapter expressing concern that any discipline stemming from a report by that university’s Office of Employment Equity, which concluded that history professor James Livingston’s Facebook posts on gentrification “were not protected by the…

Academic Freedom Conference at Berkeley City College, September 28

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, September 28 the AAUP Foundation and the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges Education Institute (FACCC EI) are sponsoring a day-long conference on academic freedom at Berkeley City College in downtown Berkeley, California.  UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky will deliver the keynote address on “Free Speech on Campus.”…