BY MATTHEW BOEDY In the past few days, as president of the Georgia conference of the AAUP, I have received two interesting comments from faculty in my state. The first was a plea to organize, rally, and protest more “to build collective strength.” The second was a plea to reform the AAUP because in the…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I fully agree with the first line of Tom Ginsburg’s attack in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the AAUP: “Colleges are entering what is likely to be their greatest crisis since the McCarthy period.” Although I don’t work for or speak for the AAUP, I strongly disagree with the rest…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Following is the guest editor’s introduction to the winter 2025 issue of Academe, out this week. The full table of contents for the issue is available here. We live in a world at war. According to the United Nations, the current century can be characterized as “a new era of conflict and violence.” The…
BY DAVID M. RABBAN In the process of writing my recently published book, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press, 2024), I increasingly realized that the AAUP’s treatment of academic freedom as a professional norm provides a revealing counterpart to the judicial development of academic freedom as a First Amendment…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The new year brings a wide range of different events related to academic freedom and deadlines for opportunities. Here’s a quick summary of some activities, and you are encouraged to add any additional opportunities (such as AAUP state conference and chapter events) in the comments. The AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom…
BY JOHN K. WILSON In the war of words between advocates of the AAUP and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), we need to recognize the value of both organizations. I wrote an essay at Inside Higher Ed, “In Defense of FIRE,” responding to Joan Scott’s critique of FIRE. FIRE president and CEO…
BY TEXAS AAUP-AFT The following statement was released November 19 by the Texas AAUP-AFT. Upon the passage of Senate Bill 17 last year, Texas faculty warned of the detrimental impacts the state’s so-called ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices would have on the ability of colleges and universities to perform their duties…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On October 26, the Executive Committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter issued the following public statement regarding the recent police raid on Penn undergraduate students: We are alarmed by the Penn administration’s escalating use of police action against Penn students. So too are we alarmed by the University’s pattern—established…
BY MALICK W. GHACHEM In the weeks since writing my recent piece for Academe magazine on last year’s Israel-Palestine campus conflict, the atmosphere on my own campus (MIT) has become, if anything, even more tense. The pressures bearing down on both administrators and students remain all too apparent, as does the war of attrition about…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2024 issue of Academe, “The Status of Academic Collective Bargaining,” out this week. The full table of contents for the issue can be found here. Recently released data from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions brought…