BY JENNIFER RUTH AND EDDIE R. COLE When the entire Black delegation of the Mississippi State Senate walked out to protest the vote on banning critical race theory on January 21, I thought about UCLA professor Eddie R. Cole’s 2020 book The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom. “The people…
BY JENNIFER RUTH AND ELLEN SCHRECKER We’re used to hearing that American higher education is in serious danger. Many of us have developed a kind of learned helplessness in response to the regularity with which we hear about the crises of the academy. But we are not powerless. Although the current educational gag orders targeting…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In a speech in Georgia on Tuesday, President Biden called voter suppression and election subversion “Jim Crow 2.0.” Criticism of the comparison was swift. The “worst hyperbole to date,” an op-ed in Boston Herald called it. Republican Senator Tim Scott* of South Carolina took to the floor to express his irritation and…
BY JENNIFER RUTH If you haven’t seen it, you might want to read Colleen Flaherty’s excellent piece “Recentering the Bright Sheng Debate” in Inside Higher Ed today. Last Friday, I wrote about the vast libertarian network researched in the new book Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War. This funding, much of which…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “One looks in vain for mainstream reporting to call this what it is,” Columbia law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw told the audience at the National Teach-In held on October 14th in honor of George Floyd’s birthday. The fanatical distortions of critical race theory by partisan politicians, the alleged “woke” orthodoxy stifling free speech…
BY JENNIFER RUTH We at Academe blog have a number of posts discussing the legislation attempting to restrict curricula teaching race and gender justice and critical race theory. See here, here, here, and here. “This is the new McCarthyism,” historian Ellen Schrecker has written. The AAUP itself has put out a number of statements criticizing…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH As readers of this blog and so likely AAUP members, you may already know about one of the two events. On October 2nd, Chair of the AAUP Racial Justice Committee Glinda Rawls wrote members about the AAPF Call to Action Teach-in on October 14th: National Critical Race Theory Teach In Thursday,…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “The neutral ground” is what New Orleanians call the grassy median that runs down streets like St. Charles and Carrollton avenues. The Neutral Ground is also the title of the excellent new documentary on PBS by comedian C.J. Hunt. Hunt’s subject is the controversy over confederate monuments and his title references one…
BY JENNIFER RUTH As Carolyn Betensky’s posts made clear (see here, here and here), universities and colleges are not prepared to safely protect faculty and students as classes begin this fall. Individual crises are erupting everywhere (as this Inside Higher Ed article about more professors quitting over face-to-face teaching mandates details) and some organized actions…