BY HANK REICHMAN Later this month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, in which anti-union “right to work” forces are challenging the right of public employee unions to collect agency fees from non-members that the unions represent. These fees have since 1977 been protected by…
BY HANK REICHMAN Fifty years ago this April the administration of Columbia University deployed the New York City Police Department to clear hundreds of student protesters from five campus buildings they had occupied for nearly a week, during which the police ran riot, indiscriminately beating students and faculty members, protesting or not, while “clearing” the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last June I posted a piece to this blog praising conservative scholar Jonathan Marks for his forthright defense of the academic freedom of Black Lives Matter activist Lisa Durden, who was dismissed from her part-time teaching position at Essex County College in New Jersey after she argued with the odious Tucker Carlson…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, January 19, the AAUP and the National Education Association (NEA) jointly filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31. In that case the ostensible plaintiff, Mark Janus, backed by the National Right to Work Committee and other anti-union groups, seeks…
BY HANK REICHMAN Issued in December, the AAUP’s report, “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom,” examines politically motivated threats to scientific research, with emphasis on threats to climate science and on the initial actions of the Trump administration. As one of the authors of this report I learned how daunting, if not…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the abstract describing a report issued this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Do School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession,” by C. Kirabo Jackson, Cora Wigger, Heyu Xiong (bold face added): Audits of public school budgets routinely find evidence of waste. Also, recent evidence…
BY HANK REICHMAN January 2018 marks thirty years since the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. On Wednesday, January 31, the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) will sponsor the first Hazelwood Day of Action — “a day to raise awareness about the Hazelwood decision, publicize its destructive legacy for student…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the AAUP report “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom” issued last month readers will find the following: Dr. Eugene Gu is a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University whose research seeks to transplant healthy fetal organs in utero to fetuses with fatal congenital diseases so they can survive to…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is taken from the AAUP’s website: The AAUP submitted an amicus brief December 28 to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit urging the Court to uphold the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) determination that non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) are…