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…
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…
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:…
BY HANK REICHMAN A little more than a month ago, Martin Kich posted to this blog a piece on the Koch network that prompted a lively and extensive exchange in the comments section between Conor Gibson of UnKoch My Campus, John Wilson, and Phil Magness, a professor at George Mason University, frequent commenter on this…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted an item on threats to academic freedom at Central European University (CEU) in Hungary and European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP). Yesterday, tens of thousands of demonstrators swarmed Budapest in defense of the CEU. The protest drew some of the largest crowds against right-wing prime minister Victor Orban’s…
BY HANK REICHMAN In January, the Reclaim California Higher Education Coalition issued a report, The $48 Fix, which demonstrated that California could provide today’s students with the same accessible low-cost university experience that California successfully offered its students from the 1960s through the 1990s through an income surtax of no more than $48/year for the…
BY HANK REICHMAN On April 4, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law that could compel Central European University (CEU), founded in 1991 by the liberal financier and philanthropist George Soros, the liberal financier and philanthropist who promotes democratic, transparent government and freedom of expression through his Open Society Foundations, to cease operations in the country. The…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was released by California Scholars for Academic Freedom: The newly inaugurated U.S. administration has created an atmosphere of violence, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism. A less discussed aspect of these attacks is on academic freedom. The 2016 election has taken to new extremes the threats to academic freedom. We…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was released by the American Society of Journalists and Authors: A free press is one of the standards of American democracy. In the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Founding Fathers guaranteed the rights of a free press and free speech. Any attempt to…
BY HANK REICHMAN My title may be — indeed, probably is, alas — overoptimistic, but the rapid-fire sequence of events surrounding putrid provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, including the revoking of his invitation to speak at CPAC, the loss of his lucrative book deal, and finally, today, his forced resignation from Breitbart News, the repulsive fake news…