Earlier this month a student at Crafton Hills College, a community college in the Los Angeles area, and her parents urged the institution to ban several graphic novels. They complained about four works: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel; YY: The Last Man, Vol. 1, by Brian Vaughan; The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll’s House, by…
Shortly after the AAUP’s annual membership meeting placed the administration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on its list of censured administration for its summary dismissal of Professor Steven Salaita in response to his anti-Israeli comments on Twitter, I received an email from an old friend from the California State University Academic Senate,…
It has been six months since Judge Curtis Karnow ruled in favor of San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s challenge to the decision by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) to revoke the accreditation of City College of San Francisco, about which I have been reporting on this blog. (Links to all…
It is often claimed that supporters of academic freedom and tenure, like the AAUP, are simply left-wing or liberal professors seeking to protect their own positions and privilege their own views. Those of us who know better realize how ridiculous this argument can be, but now, in the wake of Scott Walker’s attack on tenure…
If you have been following the controversy over the proposed Cohen-Tucker fellowship program the following announcement, issued today by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), which brings the controversy to a positive end, will interest you. If you didn’t follow this story see my previous posts here, here, here and here.…
In a stunning and welcome development on the eve of a scheduled court hearing on Monday, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced today that “a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been agreed upon by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer, Saving Sweet Briar, Sweet Briar College and the Office of the Attorney General outlining a plan…
I rarely post items to this site that don’t deal pretty directly with higher education, leaving such posts to my entertaining friend Marty Kich and others perhaps more worldly than I. But today I thought I might post something about the case of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP leader from Spokane, Washington, who stepped down after…
On March 3, President James Jones of Sweet Briar College shocked the small women’s college’s faculty and students by announcing that the school would close its doors on June 30. Seniors would be allowed to graduate, but all other students would be compelled to transfer elsewhere. Faculty members were provided vague promises of assistance, but…
On June 2, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, held a hearing on “First Amendment Protections on Public College and University Campuses.” The subcommittee received testimony from four witnesses: Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); Kim Colby,…
The following statement signed by 22 scholarly associations was released on June 11. It is consistent with the position of a resolution passed unanimously by the AAUP’s annual membership meeting on June 13. The American system of higher education is the envy of the world. It’s not perfect; few things are. But at a time…