BY HANK REICHMAN Today, the California Faculty Association (CFA), an AAUP-affiliate representing 25,000+ faculty members in the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, released a new report, “Equity, Interrupted: How California Is Cheating Its Future,” the first in a promised series. Among its findings, the report details decisions impacting the CSU and its students, and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today the Washington Post published an important op-ed piece, “If colleges keep killing academic freedom, civilization will die, too,” by José A. Cabranes, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Cabranes, a Bill Clinton appointee and highly respected jurist, previously served as General Counsel for Yale University…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m an historian by discipline, but I didn’t attend this year’s meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA) last week in Denver. I wish I had, if only to have heard the discussion of “Historical Expertise and Political Authority,” described by Colleen Flaherty in her report on the meeting for Inside Higher…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today more than 12,000 University of California (UC) administrative, clerical and support workers, members of Teamsters Local 2010, walked off the job to protest numerous unfair labor practices and violations of state law committed by the UC administration. The walkout at all ten UC campuses, five medical centers and three national laboratories…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In a post last week on Bill Moyers’ website New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen outlined a series of troubling (and a few encouraging) developments regarding the survival of a free press in the U.S. Here are some highlights: For a free press as a check on power this is…
BY HANK REICHMAN Aaron Barlow (here and here) and Martin Kich (here) have already posted items to this blog about the recently renewed legislative threats to academic freedom in Wisconsin, with Aaron calling appropriate attention to the excellent op-ed piece published in today’s New York Times by UW-Madison professor Donald Moynihan. But because I and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was approved by the Council of the American Historical Association (AHA) at its meeting on January 5: The AHA upholds the rights of students, faculty, and other historians to speak freely and to engage in nonviolent political action expressing diverse perspectives on historical or contemporary issues. We condemn…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On December 1, the AAUP, the College Media Association (CMA), the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) released a report, Threats to the Independence of Student Media, shining a light on threats to student media and faculty and staff advisers. The report reaffirms and expands…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week’s controversy over Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet about “white genocide” has once again raised the perpetually thorny issue of academic freedom’s claim to protect the “extramural utterances” of faculty members who speak as private citizens. As of this writing it appears that Drexel administrators have disavowed any intent to…