Two decades ago, I wrote a book titled “The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education.” Two decades later, the myth continues. Today, the proponent is Jonathan Chait, who warns us in New York Magazine of this dire evil resurrected from the distant past: Political correctness. According to Chait, “Political correctness is…
Recently, news about a set of demands by activist students at Clemson University concerned about racism and intolerance spread like wildfire across the internet when a group of 110 faculty and staff published a letter in the student newspaper endorsing those demands. These students and faculty were accused by various conservative websites of wanting to…
In response to Steven Salaita’s lawsuit yesterday, the University of Illinois administration issued a statement (copied in full below). Many claims in the U of I statement are incorrect, and others seem to confess to precisely the punishment of political speech that Salaita’s lawsuit is based upon. The U of I statement claims that Salaita’s tweets…
Steven Salaita filed a lawsuit today in a federal district court against the University of Illinois trustees and top administrators, seeking reinstatement and damages because of his dismissal. The lawsuit makes many counts against the University of Illinois, including federal violations of the First Amendment (“firing him for his political speech”), procedural due process (“summarily stripping…
Last fall, AcademeBlog reported on the case of Robin Meade, an adjunct instructor and head of the adjunct faculty union at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois, who was fired in 2013 and banned from campus because she wrote a letter critical of how the administration treated adjuncts. Meade wrote an essay about her experience. On…
Nicholas Stewart, a student at Western Illinois University, and editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, the Western Courier, was suspended from his position last week by the administration, and is being brought up on charges of violating the Code of Student Conduct because he recorded video of a riot on campus, and sold that video to…
Last week, AcademeBlog posted a letter from Daniel Maguire about the John McAdams suspension by Marquette University, and an essay by Martin Kich about it. The following letter from Gregory Scholtz of the AAUP was sent today to Marquette and posted by McAdams on his blog. January 26, 2015 Dr. Michael R. Lovell President Marquette…
Earlier this month, five professors at the University of Illinois (Nicholas Burbules, R.H. Campbell, Kim Graber, Joyce Tolliver, and Matthew Wheeler, referred to as the “Gang of Five”) wrote a response to the UIUC CAFT Report, criticizing it and defending the dismissal of Steven Salaita. The Gang of Five claims that they embrace the AAUP’s…
The debate over the firing of Steven Salaita is not over. The criticism of the University of Illinois continues, although many defenders of the chancellor and trustees wish people would stop talking about it. The Campus Faculty Association has started a petition calling for the U of I to follow the recommendations of the CAFT…
Richard Vedder argued at Forbes.com that in higher education, “the most invidious single violation of basic concepts of free expression of ideas is the attack on the Koch brothers, Charles and David.” This claim is absurd, since no one has sought to censor the Koch Brothers, and because their foundation has sought to limit academic…