Today is the beginning of Banned Books Week, and so it’s an appropriate time to report on speakers who are banned by colleges because of their past writings. This week, Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania decided to disinvite Ellen Goodman from giving a speech on campus next month. The right-wing Cardinal Newman Society celebrated the…
The AAUP has a statement on the strike at Cincinnati State. Here’s some of the media coverage from the AAUP website: “The administration’s original proposal included a workload increase that is more than 20 percent higher than the standard workload at comparable institutions. This would dramatically reduce the ability of faculty members to maintain the…
A jury in Orange County today found 10 UC-Irvine and UC-Riverside students guilty of conspiring to disrupt a speech at Irvine by the Israeli ambassador to the US. I wrote about this case last year, when I objected to the collective punishment of a student group for what these individuals did: “it appears that the…
In a posting last week on Minding the Campus, Herbert London endorsed an effort to banish anti-Semitism on campus, noting “The Israel Law Center warns that colleges and universities ‘may be liable for massive damage’ if they fail to prevent anti-Semitism. London also praises the Israel Law Center’s reference to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling…
Former Northwestern professor David Protess writes a column at Huffington Post about a court’s ruling that requires Northwestern to reveal to the government “private communications between the students (and sometimes me) that included requests for references, breaking news about dead grandmothers and plans to meet for drinks.” Protess defends advocacy journalism, and concludes: “At stake…
College student voting rights are under assault again. Back in July, “Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster stood before reporters and TV cameras Monday waving a list of 206 college students who ‘may have conducted voter fraud here in Maine.’” Webster declared, “If you want to get really honest, this is about how the Democrats…
The Massachusetts Republican Party has written to Harvard, demanding that they refuse to pay Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for teaching one class twice a week this fall on contract law. Nate Little, executive director of the state GOP, wrote in a letter to Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust: By restoring her to the faculty, even…
News outlets are reporting today that Adrienne Anderson died on Sept. 7 at the age of 59. Anderson was fired by the University of Colorado in 2005 after 12 years as an instructor in the environmental and ethnic studies departments, an important but overlooked academic freedom case. In 1999, Anderson noted how the University cancelled…
The Navy ROTC has been restored at Harvard in the wake of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ending this week. But don’t expect any major changes, reports the Boston Globe (registration required, alas). The area’s ROTC commanding officer, Captain Curtis Stevens, reported: “It’s really about the numbers. You couldn’t have a viable unit just at Harvard…
Some good news: in a new survey of teenagers by the Knight Foundation, the percentage of high school students who believe “the First Amendment goes too far” in protecting the rights of citizens has dropped to a quarter (24 percent) in 2011 from nearly half (45 percent) in 2006. The more alarming news comes from…