CFA Statement on Detention of CSULA Student Activist

BY HENRY REICHMAN On Thursday, May 18, California State University, Los Angeles student and immigration rights activist Claudia Rueda was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents as she moved her family’s car outside their home. Federal agents had detained Rueda’s mother earlier this month. The following statement on her detention was released today by the…

Requiem for the Public University

BY HANK REICHMAN On April 27, Queen Elizabeth II formally assented to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, approved by Britain’s Conservative Parliament earlier in the year.  The act accelerated the privatization of Britain’s higher education system, a process begun decades earlier and which in key respects mirrors American developments.  The following comments on…

Graduates Boo DeVos at HBCU Commencement

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I posted the first in a series of posts on the free speech rights of invited campus speakers.  I fully expected to devote much of today to preparing the next installment.  But this morning Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos delivered the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University, an historically black institution in…

So Much for Confidential Searches!

BY HANK REICHMAN AB 847, a bill currently under consideration in the California Assembly, would require the local academic senate of a campus of the California State University or of a campus of the California Community Colleges, and would request the local academic senate of a campus of the University of California, to post its…

On Outside Speakers and Academic Freedom, Part I

BY HANK REICHMAN “A university without student protests against visiting speakers would be like a forest without birds.” — Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, p. 155 This is the first of three four posts in a series. The issue of the right of controversial and sometimes deeply offensive invited…

State Audits Challenge CSU, UC Spending

BY HANK REICHMAN The California State University (CSU) system has hired new managers at more than double the rate of other employees over the past decade at salaries growing twice as fast as those of faculty members and support staff.  The administration of the University of California (UC) system pays salaries and benefits to top managers…

Robbing the Faculty (and the Taxpayers)

BY HANK REICHMAN In 2012 voters in Alameda County (including this blogger), across the bay from San Francisco, approved Measure B, a parcel tax, to provide the Peralta Community College District, which has  campuses in Berkeley, Alameda and Oakland, an extra $8 million each year.  The funds were designated to “support affordable college education including:…