BY HANK REICHMAN In a victory for both academic freedom and science an appeals court ruled today that climate change scientist and AAUP Committee A member Michael Mann can sue two conservative writers over allegations that they defamed him. The case centers on posts written by Rand Simberg in a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blog…
BY HANK REICHMAN Is a faculty handbook a legally binding contract? The question is not an easy one to answer, as the law may vary from state to state. In 2015 the AAUP’s legal department updated its Faculty Handbooks Guide, which includes basic information for each state, although the Guide “is not exhaustive and is…
BY HANK REICHMAN Words: On November 17, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger spoke to attendees at the university’s annual Hamilton Award Dinner. Here is part of the Columbia Spectator’s report on his remarks: “The University is not a political institution—we do not take positions on political issues. But when you have a position that…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted an item about Kristina Bogos, a former New York University (NYU) student now a graduate student at Georgetown University, who was denied entry to Qatar, where she sought to continue research on the conditions of migrant workers that she began as an undergraduate at NYU’s campus in…
BY HANK REICHMAN In March I am scheduled to participate in a plenary panel on “The Impact of Anti-Intellectualism on the State of Higher Education” at the annual Hunter College Conference on Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions in New York. To prepare I’ve been reading (I’m embarrassed to admit, for the first…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Ibram X. Kendi, assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida and winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, will be the plenary speaker at the AAUP’s Annual Conference on the State of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Regular readers of this blog will recall how last year New York University Professor Andrew Ross was stopped from boarding a flight to Abu Dhabi, where NYU has a campus and where Ross had intended to conduct research. Ross, a vocal critic of the human-rights record of the United Arab Emirates, was…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last month I posted to this blog Christopher Newfield’s excellent response to the notorious New York Times op-ed by Mark Lilla on “identity politics.” If you haven’t read Chris’s piece, you should. At the time I mentioned that “I still may post more on this topic,” and since then I’ve been collecting…
BY HANK REICHMAN A majority of teaching and research assistants at Columbia have voted to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board confirmed today, December 9. Graduate and undergraduate students voted 1602 to 623 in favor of joining Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers Union. University administrators and especially provost John Coatsworth had lobbied vigorously against…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is excerpted from a story in Pensions and Investments online and reposted on the blog of the UCLA Faculty Association under the above title. University of California gives CIO $841,000 bonus despite year of negative returns By Randy Diamond | December 9, 2016 The University of California Regents approved…