I can’t quite decide what I find more repulsive: Yale University’s decision to ban “Sex Week” from campus, or the Yale Daily News’ approval of this decision as defending “free speech.” In an astonishing act of repression and lack of respect for student rights, Yale president Richard Levin has banned a student group from holding…
Over 600 University of California at Berkeley faculty have signed this letter in protest of the police violence against the Occupy Cal demonstration: November 11, 2011 Open Letter to Chancellor Birgeneau, the UC Berkeley administration, and the UC Regents: We, the undersigned faculty, lecturers, and graduate student assistants—all of whom teach at Berkeley and are…
The Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Faculty Association issued this announcement: The faculty strike at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is over. The SIUC Faculty Association’s Departmental Representative Council (DRC) voted tonight to end the strike after it was presented with a revised administrative proposal will form the basis of a tentative agreement to be…
Cary Nelson has taken a lot of criticism for defending the free speech of Julio Pino, a Kent State professor who said “Death to Israel” to an Israeli speaker at an extracurricular event on campus. At Minding the Campus, K.C. Johnson attacks Nelson for stating, “Calling out a political slogan during a question period falls…
From the AAUP website: Faculty at Cincinnati State have a new contract. “During the past few months of negotiation, the administration positions became increasingly extreme and the possibility of reaching meaningful, economically sound compromises seemed unlikely,” Cincinnati State AAUP past president Pam Ecker said in a statement. “Faculty members agreed to accept this contract resolution…
Illustrating an intellectual confusion common among conservative pundits, George Will denounces Vanderbilt University for requiring its own student organizations to follow its non-discrimination policy by not banning gay students. Will declares, “Whereas it is wrong for government to prefer one religion over another, when private persons and religious groups do so, this is the constitutionally…
Tenured and tenure-track faculty at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale went on strike this morning. Three other unions, representing non-tenure-track faculty, graduate assistants, and civil service employees, reached agreements last night. (All four unions are represented by the IEA/NEA.) SIU president Glenn Poshard, who has been head of the institution for five years after earning…
It’s difficult to imagine a major more beloved by conservatives than Classical Studies. The one bulwark against all those trendy majors has always been a nice dose of Greek and Latin. So it was strange yesterday to hear Rush Limbaugh denouncing Classical Studies as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy and announcing, “If you go…
Joan DelFattore is a professor of English and legal studies at the University of Delaware and the author of Knowledge in the Making: Academic Freedom and Free Speech in America’s Schools and Universities. You can read DelFattore’s essay on Garcetti earlier this year in Academe, and John Elmore’s review of her book in Academe. I…