POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Tomorrow, August 1, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (UNC) will consider a proposal to bar the university’s centers and institutes from participating in litigation. The proposal exempts legal clinics, which makes clear that it is really aimed at the activities of one center only: the Chapel…
BY HANK REICHMAN Thomas Haskell, Samuel G. McCann Professor Emeritus of History at Rice University, passed away on July 12 at the age of 78. Professor Haskell was a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1993 to 1996. Among his many publications, he is perhaps best known for two…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN It was a tale of two speeches. Yesterday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos addressed the right-wing American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) meeting in Denver, where she accused teacher unions of being “defenders of the status quo” who care only about “school systems” and not about individual children. Just hours earlier Randi…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the year since the attempted coup in Turkey, a “staggering” number of academics have faced criminal investigations, detentions, prosecutions, mass dismissal, expulsion and restrictions on travel, according to an open letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, signed by Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR), the New…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier today Martin Kich posted a piece on legislation being considered in Congress that, according to an account by Glen Greenwald, “would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel.” While I think this legislation is unnecessary, ill-advised and frustratingly vague, I am skeptical that it is, as Marty argues,…
BY HANK REICHMAN “If there’s an organized outrage machine, we need an organized response.” Those words from Tressie McMillan Cottom, assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, author of the excellent Lower Ed, prolific blogger, and frequent (and often witty) presence on Twitter, headline a story in this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education on…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a victory for academic freedom and faculty rights, a California State University, Fullerton part-time anthropology lecturer facing dismissal after a fracas at a campus demonstration in February has been reinstated by order of an arbitrator. The university’s College Republicans had accused Eric Canin of striking one of them at the demonstration.…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following was posted on the blog of the Western Michigan University AAUP chapter: We join our colleagues at AFT-Michigan, along with our AFT-affiliated colleagues here at WMU, the Professional Instructors Organization (PIO) and Teaching Assistants Union (TAU), in condemning in the strongest possible terms the death sentence of admitted WMU student Mujtaba’a…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On July 8 I was interviewed on “Resistance Round Table,” a weekly radio broadcast on WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by AAUP member Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. We discussed current issues in academic freedom and free expression on campus. To listen to the half-hour interview go to this link: http://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/listen/190984 A…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following letter in support of the University of North Carolina Law School’s Center for Civil Rights, which the university’s Board of Governors has threatened,was sent on Tuesday. To: The University of North Carolina, Board of Governors Date: July 11, 2017 We write to you in our capacity as law professors,…