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,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Temple University Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab’s book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, is one of the most important books on higher education to appear in recent years. The book demonstrates, through both comprehensive data and often heart-wrenching personal stories, how U.S. students have been…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Here are some pictures I took at today’s NO to the #GradTax walkout at the University of California at Berkeley: The march approaches Sproul Plaza: On the stage: The audience: Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, addresses the rally on behalf of the Berkeley Faculty Association: From…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Below is the text of an open letter signed by 135 members of the University of Nebraska faculty expressing concern that “decisions involving the future of the University are being made without transparency or proper governance and under improper exertions of influence by the legislative and executive branches of the state…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The AAUP, along with other higher education groups, strongly opposes proposed tax legislation that would hurt higher education. The tax bill passed by the House of Representatives threatens to devastate graduate education by reclassifying tuition waivers as taxable income–a move that, if it becomes law, would result in an untenable financial…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is from the November 22 edition of the Riverside Press-Enterprise: A U[niversity of] C[alifornia] Riverside student seen in a viral video grabbing a fellow student’s pro-Trump hat has been charged with misdemeanor grand theft. The charge against Edith Macias was filed Nov. 3, and a warrant for her arrest was granted…