BY HANK REICHMAN Add Kennesaw State University president Sam Olens to the list of college and university executives hired in secret and departing under a cloud not long after. Last week Olens submitted his resignation amidst a growing scandal over his handling of a political protest by five cheerleaders, who took a knee at a…
BY HANK REICHMAN Readers of this blog have probably already heard how the Trump administration has barred officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using a list of seven words or phrases in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget. According to the Washington Post, policy analysts were told of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Tennessee, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have already enacted comprehensive new campus speech laws based on model legislation proposed by the Goldwater Institute, which in critical respects defend free speech by attacking it. (I discussed this legislation previously in a section of one of my lengthy posts on outside speakers, under the subtitle…
BY HANK REICHMAN This summer the North Carolina Restore Campus Free Speech Act, passed earlier in the year by the state legislature, went into effect. Directly inspired by a proposal by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, the legislation’s premise is that free speech is under attack on American campuses. Among other provisions, the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The AAUP has joined with 36 other higher education organizations in urging Congress to slow down its reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to allow the consequences of its provisions to be understood and revised as necessary. After several years of inaction, the bill is suddenly being rushed through committee with…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is excerpted from a December 7 article on the website of the Index on Censorship. A group of court reporters scurried along the halls of Istanbul’s massive Çağlayan Courthouse on the morning of 7 December, taking pictures of the tables showing the trial schedules of several high criminal courts…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this week word arrived that Princeton University history graduate student Xiyue Wang, sentenced in July by the Iranian government to ten years in prison for alleged espionage, is being transferred from general detention to Ward 7, a more extreme prison unit run by Iran’s intelligence agency. When Wang arrived there, his…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today the AAUP released a new report, “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom.” The report details troubling threats to academic freedom in the physical and natural sciences that have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s hostility to science. International scientific exchange and, especially, the charging of innocent Chinese or…
BY HANK REICHMAN Jordan Klepper’s “The Opposition” on Comedy Central tries to pick up where the old Colbert Report left off. Like Colbert, Klepper takes on the persona of an arrogant right-wing commentator to satirize the foibles and falsehoods often promoted by such. Last night his “correspondents” took on Turning Point, USA, sponsor of the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Four days after the expiration of their contract, hundreds of faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY), which serves a half million students, kicked off a contract campaign by their union, the AAUP-affiliated Professional Staff Congress (PSC), December 4 with a press conference, rallies at two CUNY campuses,…