BY JENNIFER RUTH My colleague on various AAUP committees, Dr. Derryn Moten, emailed me and others today on the occasion of the ruling. His words offer perspective that someone like John Roberts is incapable of contributing and I asked if I could share the email on the blog. He begins with a quote from the…
BY HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR (H-PAD) Right now, public education on all levels in Florida and the rights of the state’s population are under attack by forces led by Governor Ron DeSantis. The governor’s “Anti-Wokeness” campaign threatens to eviscerate honest teaching of United States history and force people of color and the trans and LGBTQ+…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In “Rutgers Unions Prepare to Surf the Strike Wave,” Hank Kalet wrote for the blog about the authorization-to-strike vote to be held at Rutgers. The vote was held and 94 percent of Rutgers AAUP-AFT members voted “yes.” Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway has been using scare tactics to intimidate the Rutgers community. In…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH In a letter to the editor, AAUP president Irene Mulvey responded to a series of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which AAUP statements were invoked to argue for the primacy of either academic freedom or diversity, equity, and inclusion. This framing pits the two against one another, as…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The Florida Education Association (FEA) and United Faculty of Florida (UFF) have launched the 3-7 challenge. On this page, FEA explains: What is the 3-7 Challenge? March 7 is the start of Florida’s 2023 legislative session, and some elected officials have promised to pass legislation that will limit the fundamental freedoms of…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Three recent pieces are worth reading for insight into Florida HB 999: “DeSantis Higher Ed Bill Heads for the Legislature” (Inside Higher Ed), “New Bill Latest Assault in Florida’s War on Education” (Forbes), and “Never Seen Anything Like it: New Bill Would Write DeSantis’s Higher Ed Vision into Law” (Chronicle of Higher Education).…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “Will You Take the Stand?” ask the Florida college students staging a walkout at noon today. In an online pledge form, they write, The DeSantis Administration is proposing to outlaw all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at Florida Colleges and Universities. He has displayed a pattern of behavior in which he Hijacks…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Nobody has a crystal ball but given the president-elect’s words and acts during the campaign—not to mention his seedy experiment in higher education—we would be fools not to expect an attack on the liberal institutions of shared governance and academic freedom. We need to look at what has happened to the sanctity of…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The rejection of the College Board’s AP course in African American Studies is only the latest in a series of disturbing news relating to education coming out of Florida. Other examples include the January 18 statement from the presidents of the twenty-eight institutions in the Florida College System declaring they will not…