BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members in other states may be excused for expressing some jealousy of California’s economic and political success since Jerry Brown was elected governor nearly eight years ago. While Republican-led states like Kansas, Iowa, or Wisconsin continue to suffer slow growth and calamitous budget shortfalls and cuts, under Brown and a Democratic…
BY HANK REICHMAN The other day, as part of an informal self-reeducation in American history prompted by our current political fix, I was rereading after many decades Richard Hofstadter’s 1948 The American Political Tradition, a series of portraits of leading American politicians from the founders to FDR. Only one of Hofstadter’s subjects, the abolitionist Wendell…
BY HANK REICHMAN George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University, has resigned his tenured position. In an announcement on Twitter posted today, Ciccariello-Maher wrote, “after nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Leaders of the City University of New York Professional Staff Congress, a joint affiliate of the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers, and the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT were among fifteen people arrested yesterday at a demonstration in New York protesting the Wall Street funders of the Republican Tax Bill, approved later…
BY HANK REICHMAN Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos delivered a commencement speech at the University of Baltimore yesterday, sparking protests from students, faculty, and members of the community. According to the Baltimore Sun, “Several dozen graduates slowly rose in protest as she spoke. First, two women in the front row — including one whose graduation…
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…