BY HANK REICHMAN Most members of the AAUP, myself included, identify politically on the left side of the political spectrum, as do a majority of American faculty members, especially in the humanities and social sciences. But the AAUP’s mission is to “advance academic freedom and shared governance” for all faculty members, regardless of their political…
BY HANK REICHMAN Recently I had occasion to look a bit into the history of the University of California at Berkeley, where I earned my doctorate and in whose shadow I have lived most of my adult life. In doing so, I encountered an interesting document, “Shared Governance at the University of California: An Historical…
BY HANK REICHMAN Almost one in four lecturers at universities in the United Kingdom claims to have been subjected to bullying by colleagues over their academic views, a recently published survey suggests. Of 2,300 people who responded to a poll on academic freedom, 23 per cent said they had suffered workplace bullying on account of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is reposted with permission from the website of the Colorado state conference of the AAUP. Despite that the symposium gods burdened Boulder with an inevitable spring blizzard, the AAUP Academic Freedom Symposium at CU-Boulder on April 29th was inspiring and memorable. The melodramatic weather could not discourage participants or…
BY HANK REICHMAN Blowhard-in-chief Donald Trump’s condemnation of “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides” in the wake of this weekend’s events in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia (UVA), has been criticized so extensively and justifiably, even by members of his own party — many of whom themselves bear responsibility…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a stunning development that the Faculty Association for the California Community Colleges called a “major win” for the state’s community college faculty, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) yesterday announced that it had settled its lawsuit against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), the embattled agency that accredits…
The following statement was issued by Henry Reichman, first vice president of the American Association of University Professors, in response to news that the Justice Department will redirect resources to investigating and potentially litigating affirmative action cases in college admissions. “The American Association of University Professors is deeply troubled by yesterday’s announcement that the US…
BY HANK REICHMAN Rejecting the recommendations of its Chapel Hill campus chancellor, over 600 law school faculty and administrators, and numerous North Carolinians demonstrating outside, the Educational Planning, Policies and Programs Committee of the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors voted 5-1, with one abstention, August 1 to bar the UNC Chapel Hill…
BY HANK REICHMAN Although, in a victory for academic freedom, the administration of Trinity College acknowledged last month that Professor Johnny Williams’s controversial social media posts “were protected by academic freedom and did not violate Trinity College policies,” a July 31 message to the campus from President Joanne Berger-Sweeney suggests that the school’s administrators still…
BY HANK REICHMAN On July 1, Georgia’s new “campus carry” law went into effect. The law, similar to legislation recently enacted in other states,most notably Texas, allows weapons permit holders to carry firearms on campus except at a sporting venue or in a student dormitory. On July 25, a Kennesaw State University student was robbed…