BY HANK REICHMAN The continuing assault on academic freedom in Turkey, which began last spring and intensified after the failed July coup attempt, continues. (For previous coverage on this blog go here.) According to Scholars at Risk, “On October 29, 2016, Turkish authorities issued a decree ordering the dismissal of 1,267 academic personnel, and the…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following piece is reposted with permission from Remaking the University, a blog sponsored by Michael Meranze, professor of history at UCLA, and Christopher Newfield, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara. It’s tempting to see higher education as a sideshow in the upheaval that Donald J. Trump’s election presents for every…
BY HANK REICHMAN For some time now colleges and universities across the country have been roiled by debates over so-called “safe spaces.” On one side stand those who argue that many members of the higher education community, especially various minorities, need “safe spaces” free from potentially harassing behavior and verbal abuse. Sometimes they have gone…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following op-ed piece appeared on November 9 in the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper at UCLA. It was reposted as well by the UCLA Faculty Association under the above title. For those unaware, according to Wikipedia “a flexitarian diet is one that is plant-based with the occasional inclusion of meat…
BY HANK REICHMAN In 1998 the late philosopher Richard Rorty published Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. While I was familiar with Rorty’s interesting brand of neo-pragmatism, with its debt to AAUP founding father John Dewey, I must have missed this book and have no recollection of its overall arguments or its reception. …
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued today. The AAUP and the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress have never endorsed or supported a candidate for president of the United States or otherwise engaged in partisan political activity on the national level. For over one hundred years the AAUP has vigilantly defended the professional rights…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Even before the failed military coup of July 15 in Turkey, concern about academic freedom in that country was growing. On March 30, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum and I issued a “Statement on Academic Freedom in Turkey,” expressing grave concern about attacks on more than 1,000 Turkish scholars. In July numerous…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Over the past few years this blog has posted a number of items related to the work of the conservative North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. In March, 2015, John Wilson reported that the center had praised the decision of the University of North Carolina Board of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN CUNY Rising, a coalition of the AAUP-affiliated Professional Staff Congress (PSC) and other community and student allies working to build support for public higher education and the City University of New York (CUNY) has issued “A CUNY Student Bill of Rights,” launching a petition campaign to support investment in higher education…
BY HANK REICHMAN In previous posts to this blog I have criticized the blacklisting activities of two pro-Israel organizations, the Amcha Initiative and Canary Mission. The former group published a list of 218 faculty members in Middle East studies at U.S. colleges and universities who signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel…