BY HANK REICHMAN A series of highly publicized sexual harassment scandals is not the only embarrassment facing the University of California at Berkeley. The university’s athletic program is also in the spotlight for abuse. A report yesterday by the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that a 2014 inquiry clearing coaches and trainers of employing abusive and…
In March I reposted from the WMU-AAUP blog comments delivered to the Western Michigan University (WMU) Board of Trustees by WMU-AAUP President and AAUP national Council member Lisa Minnick. Below are comments delivered today, June 29, to the same board by Professor Minnick. They offer a truly eloquent and effective defense of fundamental academic values…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by Peter Schmidt entitled “AAUP Rethinks How It Fights Governing Boards.” In a nutshell, the piece argues that as college and university governing boards, often overseeing multiple state institutions, increasingly overreach and interfere in governance matters best left to faculty and administrators, the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two days ago I posted a piece about the University of Chicago’s ill-considered attempt to discipline graduating senior and student body president Tyler Kissinger for his leadership of a peaceful and brief sit-in advocating, among other demands, a $15 minimum wage for campus workers. Kissinger’s disciplinary hearing was held yesterday and The…
BY HANK REICHMAN Jonathan Cole, professor and former provost at Columbia University, is a distinguished advocate for academic freedom whose work I have long admired. Last year he and his Columbia colleague, Akeel Bilgrami, edited an important collection of thoughtful essays, Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom?, which I review along with several other titles in…
BY HANK REICHMAN As regular readers of this blog know well, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to decimate public funding for the University of Wisconsin System and erode the protections of tenure and shared governance have aroused broad opposition among faculty members. On the defensive, Walker has issued a series of misleading and outright false…
BY HANK REICHMAN The University of Chicago has earned well-merited praise for its powerful 2014 “Statement on Principles of Free Expression,” a document that has been endorsed by a growing number of institutions. That statement, authored by a committee chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law and former Provost…
BY HANK REICHMAN On June 4, following Committee A’s annual spring meeting, present and former AAUP leaders, activists, and staff members gathered in Washington to join family members and friends in honoring the memory of Jordan E. Kurland, who passed away in January at the age of 87, still actively employed by the AAUP. Jordan…
BY HANK REICHMAN Alice Dreger, the controversial author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice, an exciting and important defense of academic freedom in the sciences, who last year resigned a position at Northwestern University to protest the university’s censorship of sexual content in a faculty-sponsored publication, is once again…
After a successful two-day walkout of faculty across the United Kingdom led by the University and College Union, more than 1,000 scholars have resigned from their roles as external examiners, who are contracted to sit on exam boards at other universities to review students’ work and sign off final grades. A UCU spokesperson told The…