BY MATTHEW BOEDY My former classmate Phil Christman wrote a long essay at Plough about the future of higher education, the humanities, and his particular context as a lecturer at the University of Michigan. If you haven’t read it, I wanted to bring it to your attention because it’s great. I wanted to highlight the…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY As attacks on higher education and tenure spread, it behooves faculty to make sure stakeholders such as legislators know the facts about tenure. The most common reasoning for post-tenure review is the myth of the “deadwood” tenured professor. We on campus have always known it is a myth. But now the very…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY With organizational help from Washington Post humor columnist Alexandria Petri’s recent piece on presidential endorsements . . . The Washington Post, among other major newspapers, is not endorsing presidential candidates this year. And major universities are stepping back from issuing statements on matters of public concern. Since the latter institutions are choosing…
POSTED BY MATTHEW BOEDY Students (English majors) in my University of North Georgia Advanced Expository Writing course that focuses this semester on the link between higher education and democracy were asked to write an editorial answering this specific question: Would I participate in a student-led campus protest? The editorial below is by Nicole Clifton, who…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY A first-of-its-kind survey of higher education faculty across the South has revealed that an overwhelming majority of respondents in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas are deeply dissatisfied with the current state of higher education. The survey, which received responses from nearly 3,000…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY The 2024 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey is live. If you are a faculty member of any kind in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas we want to hear from you. Here is the link to the survey. Please fill out the survey…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY The Georgia conference of the AAUP recently published its semi-annual newsletter and I thought readers of this blog might be interested in one element of it. The conference asked from the state university system all complaints concerning academic freedom and freedom of speech submitted to the system’s confidential ethics hotline within the…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY As Emory University sent police in late April to raid a student protest encampment—during which at least three faculty were arrested, one thrown to the ground—my state’s largest newspaper asked me as president of the state AAUP conference for my thoughts on the national situation that engulfed more than seventy-five public college…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY In Georgia we decided to conduct a small survey of faculty opinions about shared governance. And the results are not merely shocking but show the direct effects from Georgia’s university system gutting tenure in 2021. Using the AAUP’s shared governance survey tool, we asked faculty at a large university to tell us…