BY ANNA MCCARTHY Academic life has never been more precarious. The Trump administration’s attack on research, on free speech, and on student activism—an attack on the core ideals of the university—builds on decades of economic and political assault on the higher education workforce. Weakening faculty governance has long been the goal of boards of trustees.…
Given the news today (March 21) that Columbia has caved, I am reposting this statement from the Columbia AAUP chapter, which was released on March 18. They clearly need to be in charge of Columbia not its Board of Trustees and the President who works for it. The Assault on Columbia University by Columbia University…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In a review in spring 2022, which seems a century ago, I wrote that “an irony or paradox adheres to [Ellen Schrecker’s book] The Lost Promise in that this riches-to-rags story leaves readers not dispirited but inspired.” Although Schrecker’s book traces the seemingly lost promise of the 60s’ dream of free public…
BY JENNIFER RUTH AAUP and other campus unions are mobilizing to defend their institutions against the Trump administration’s outright assault on higher education and insist that their university administrations do the same. I am posting some of the letters to university administrations that I’m aware of so that they might provide inspiration and models for…
Today, March 13, 2025, the Middle East Studies Association released the following important statement. To go directly to the statement on the site, click here. The second Trump administration has ushered in an existential threat to academic freedom and higher education in the United States. The current campaign targeting universities is an extension of earlier…
Thursday 13 March, 1pm EST on Zoom BDS, International Law, and the Struggle for Rights and Representation on US Campuses Workshop Introduction and moderator: Karim Mattar (CAHE) Speakers: Omar Barghouti (Palestinian BDS National Committee) and Radhika Sainath (Palestine Legal) Registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/pyyCqnJvT1ain-vG4sJ5mg Please join CAHE on Thursday 13 March, 1pm EST for our BDS, International Law, and the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH When Jan Haaken and I decided to make The Palestine Exception: What’s at Stake in the Campus Protests?, we couldn’t know how events here—much less in Gaza and the West Bank—would unfold. We had been talking about a film about the suppression of academic freedom in Texas and pivoted when some of the…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH The Coalition for Action in Higher Ed (CAHE) is mobilizing again this year for another Day of Action on April 17. Last year, more than 100 campuses participated in the Day of Action, holding events, rallies, viewing parties for the teach-in, and meetings to strategize. To bring campuses together simultaneously, CAHE…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ, TIM GIBSON, AND JAMES FINKELSTEIN This blog post is the second in a series on the transformation of George Mason University’s board. Read part I here. From Conservative Oversight to Extreme Partisan Activism In recent years, George Mason University’s Board of Visitors (BOV) has dramatically transformed from conservative oversight to extreme partisan…