BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court in a narrow 5-4 ruling capped a week of outrageous decisions by declaring agency fee payments by non-union members unconstitutional in the public sector. The ruling, which overturned a unanimous 1977 decision supported by such conservative luminaries as William Rehnquist, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger,…
POSTED BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY The following is a condensed version of an address made by AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum to the AAUP’s 104th Annual Meeting on June 16. We are awaiting a Supreme Court decision that will likely have a profound effect on the way that most unions in the public sector operate, and it…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the report of the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, presented to the AAUP annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on June 16 and to be published in the annual AAUP Bulletin issue of Academe later this summer. Introduction In the past year Committee A published several policy documents…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND May–June 2018 | Vol. 104, No. 3 Contributors to the new issue of Academe remind us that even in the face of attacks against higher education from the outside, it is from the inside that we must work to keep our colleges and universities the best in the world. Articles include discussions of…
BY KELLY HAND We are delighted to announce that three faculty activists will be honored for their extraordinary dedication and accomplishments at the AAUP’s Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education in June. The Georgina M. Smith Award will go to Deborah Smith of Kent State University on Saturday, June 16, at an awards…
BY JOERG TIEDE An investigative report is out today in a case that crystallizes the current right-wing assault on higher education. It involves issues that the AAUP has been working on intensively this year: faculty harassment and exaggerated controversies over free speech on campus. The case concerns Courtney Lawton, a graduate student and part-time lecturer…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m often asked whether the AAUP is as willing to defend the academic freedom and due process rights of right-wing faculty members as we are of liberals and leftists, with whom most of our members tend to be more sympathetic. The answer is that we are and have done so repeatedly throughout…
BY LESLIE BARY AND OLGA BEZHANOVA Guest blogger Leslie Bary (AAUP) teaches Latin American literature and culture at the University of LouisianaLafayette. Guest blogger Olga Bezhanova (NEA/IEA) is in Peninsular Spanish literature and culture at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The “I” in this piece is collective, referring to experiences of both authors as well as…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the greatest of all American scholars and intellectuals. To commemorate the occasion and explore the lessons of DuBois’s life and work for our time, the always thought-provoking Black Perspectives blog of the African American Intellectual History Society has…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a petition to the Higher Learning Commission signed by elected officials and community leaders from across Indiana and the Midwest, joined by thousands of faculty members and students at colleges and universities across Indiana and the Midwest. The petition calls on the Commission to reject…