Since today is Bertrand Russell’s birthday (he was born in 1872), I wanted to share this short segment from my dissertation on the history of academic freedom about Russell’s firing from CCNY and the first court case to mention the words “academic freedom”: A turning point in academic freedom came in 1940. That year marked the…
On May 5 at the PEN Literary Gala, the magazine Charlie Hebdo will be awarded the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award. At least 204 PEN members have signed a letter objecting to the honor, complaining that Charlie Hebdo offended Muslims and therefore is unworthy of any award. The anti-Charlie Hebdo…
George Mason University (GMU) has gotten a lot of attention this week, with FIRE declaring that GMU “has eliminated all of its speech codes, earning the highest, ‘green light’ rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.” Unfortunately, this isn’t true. GMU continues to have a Student Code of Conduct that’s flawed in many…
Laura Loomer, a student at Barry University, was suspended on Monday. Her crime? Embarrassing the university, by recording an undercover video for James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas in which she duped employees into expressing support for her forming a pro-ISIS student group. What Loomer did was sleazy and dishonest. She took advantage of the fact that…
The University of South Carolina has suspended a student, apparently for writing the N-word on a white board in a study room on campus, revealed in a photo that was posted online: This controversy has attracted attention not merely on campus and in the community, but also nationwide and even on the NBC Nightly News.…
University of Oklahoma President David Boren has shut down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, ordered students living there to leave, and expelled two students for leading a racist chant. These actions are a violation of the University of Oklahoma’s rules and, as FIRE points out, punishing these students is “almost certainly unconstitutional.” Some might wonder:…
The Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s law school has been eliminated by the Board of Governors. As the AAUP noted in a statement opposing this move, “centers must be free to sponsor curricular and extracurricular programs and provide services to the public across the broadest…
Marquette University Dean Richard Holz has written a letter to Professor John McAdams, announcing that university will revoke his tenure and fire him. The AAUP recently wrote a letter to Marquette objecting to the suspension of McAdams without adequate cause or hearing. This latest development is far more alarming. AAUP regulations, and Marquette’s own policies,…
Last week, I reported on the case of Western Illinois University suspending the Western Courier editor-in-chief Nicholas Stewart because he sold video he took of a riot on campus. This week, WIU decided to reinstate Stewart. WIU student services vice-president Gary Biller informed Stewart, “a preliminary review … has revealed that no complete policy exists within…
UPDATE: I’ll be speaking at a panel on “Shared Governance and Academic Freedom: Where Are We Now?” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Weds. Feb. 11, 7:30pm @ University YMCA, 1001 S. Wright St., Champaign, sponsored by the Campus Faculty Association. On a related topic, the AAUP chapter at UIUC has issued these two statements on…