BY HANK REICHMAN In the Fall of 2014 I posted several entries to this blog (see here, here, and here) suggesting that “recent attempts to enforce standards of ‘civility’ at colleges and universities, often . . . in response to pro-Palestinian expression, recalled previous efforts in the 1940s and 1950s to exclude alleged communists from…
BY HANK REICHMAN I am old enough to remember August 1, 1966 — fifty years ago today — when a mentally disturbed ex-marine, Charles Whitman, climbed to the top of the tower at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) with an arsenal of high-powered weapons and began shooting. For 96 terrifying minutes, Whitman fired…
POSTED BY HENRY REICHMAN The following is the text of a letter signed by 114 members of the faculty at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs in response to a campaign appearance at the university by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. July 28, 2016 Dear Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak, With the pending visit of the Republican nominee…
POSTED BY HENRY REICHMAN The following is the text of a letter sent today (July 25) to President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and signed by nearly 400 U.S. academics, including AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, AAUP First Vice-President Henry Reichman, AAUP-CBC Chair Howard Bunsis, AAUP General Counsel…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following comes from a story published yesterday by The Hill: Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Tuesday told delegates at the Republican National Convention that the GOP has “lost” the millennial generation of voters. Addressing the South Carolina delegation, Luntz attributed the Democratic Party’s hold on younger adults to colleges and universities…
BY HANK REICHMAN A few days ago, shortly before the failed coup in Turkey that sought to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, I posted an item to this blog, “Attacks on Academic Freedom Continue in Turkey.” When word of the coup attempt arrived very soon after my post went up, I quickly…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Last month the Professional Staff Congress, a joint AAUP-AFT union representing faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY), reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement with the CUNY administration after working six long years without a contract. The union’s executive committee and delegate assembly have voted overwhelmingly in support…
BY HANK REICHMAN UPDATE: THIS PIECE WAS PUBLISHED SHORTLY BEFORE WORD BEGAN TO SPREAD OF A POSSIBLE MILITARY COUP IN TURKEY. THE POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SUCH A COUP, SUCCESSFUL OR NOT, FOR THE DEVELOPMENTS DISCUSSED IN THIS POST ARE, OF COURSE, UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME. In March, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum and I issued a…
BY HANK REICHMAN For the past three years I have been posting about the ongoing issues regarding accreditation at the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and the subsequent disaffection of virtually all of California’s community colleges with their current accreditor, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). This past spring attention focused…
BY HANK REICHMAN Up until Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton yesterday, it was common to view the main fault line dividing the Democratic Party as that between Sanders’ largely younger and definitely more radical supporters and a more cautious and aging party “establishment” represented by Clinton. But another fault line has been that…