BY HANK REICHMAN With freedom comes responsibility. That old maxim is frequently heard in controversies involving academic freedom. Too often it is taken simply to suggest that such freedom carries with it the responsibility to limit the degree to which freedom is exercised. Don’t rock the boat, we have been warned, if we don’t want…
BY HANK REICHMAN I should have expected that those politicians demanding the removal from schools of books on “critical race theory” and other titles dealing with race and gender that might cause “discomfort” would inevitably fall back on that old standby of the book banners — the claim that school libraries and classrooms have been…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday’s launch of a new “university,” the so-called University of Austin (or UATX; their own acronym, which looks more like a listing on the stock exchange), garnered widespread ridicule on academic social media. University of Rhode Island historian Erik Loomis no doubt spoke for many when he tweeted, “Honestly, making fun of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On November 1, Brian Soucek, Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California at Davis, spoke as part of the UC Davis Forums on the Public University and the Social Good on “Academic Freedom: Dangers and Distractions.” Professor Soucek is the outgoing chair of the University of California’s…
BY HANK REICHMAN In March, more than 3,000 student workers at Columbia University in New York City went on strike after more than two years of unsuccessful negotiations over the university’s first graduate student labor contract. Yesterday they walked out again, this time indefinitely. The Student Workers of Columbia–United Auto Workers has bargained with the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Recently I had the pleasure of discussing academic freedom with Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance, for that organization’s podcast. His interview with me is now available at the link below. My thanks to Keith and to the AFA for…
BY HANK REICHMAN The state of Florida has gotten something of a reputation for zaniness. The “Florida Man” meme has been the source of both laughter and horror, as tales of outlandish behavior in the news repeatedly go viral. To read some of the most outrageous (and entertaining), go here. But these days “Florida Man”…
BY HANK REICHMAN At the invitation of the AAUP chapter, I was scheduled to visit and speak at La Salle University in Philadelphia in April 2020 about my book, The Future of Academic Freedom. Of course, the appearance was cancelled owing to the pandemic. Yesterday, I belatedly spoke to members of the La Salle faculty…
BY HANK REICHMAN A week after non-tenure-track lecturers at the University of California held rallies at UC campuses statewide in support of their union, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), there are signs that at long last the university’s negotiators are being forced to respond to these colleagues’ demands. Thanks to pressure from faculty,…
BY HANK REICHMAN A Texas school superintendent has now apologized after one of his top officials advised teachers that, if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom library, they should give students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective. Nevertheless, the assault on classroom and school libraries in Texas and elsewhere,…