Shortly after the AAUP’s annual membership meeting placed the administration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on its list of censured administration for its summary dismissal of Professor Steven Salaita in response to his anti-Israeli comments on Twitter, I received an email from an old friend from the California State University Academic Senate,…
1) Academic freedom is not to be compromised in collective bargaining agreements and faculty handbooks that perfunctorily affirm an institutional commitment to defend academic freedom, yet declare the faculty has a responsibility to be civil, accurate and professional in all matters. Conditionality in academic freedom statements is a ruse to sanction those who deviate from the…
In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Business Can Pay to Train Its Own Work Force,” Eric Johnson writes: This is how employment is supposed to work. Companies hire broadly educated workers, invest in appropriate training, and reap the profits of a specialized work force. Increasingly, however, employers have discovered a way to offload…
In a stunning and welcome development on the eve of a scheduled court hearing on Monday, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced today that “a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been agreed upon by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer, Saving Sweet Briar, Sweet Briar College and the Office of the Attorney General outlining a plan…
By 1970, almost everyone who had worked to create “programmed instruction” during the 1950s and 1960s had moved away from the idea of teaching machines as the centerpiece of education. These tools, they had realized, were only widely effective when in the hands of master craftspeople—that is, trained teachers who understood both the limits and…
On March 3, President James Jones of Sweet Briar College shocked the small women’s college’s faculty and students by announcing that the school would close its doors on June 30. Seniors would be allowed to graduate, but all other students would be compelled to transfer elsewhere. Faculty members were provided vague promises of assistance, but…
President Timothy Killeen is completing his first month as leader of the University of Illinois system. In remarks before the Urbana-Champaign faculty Senate Executive Committee, he was rather cavalier about the AAUP censure vote last Saturday. Unlike Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise, who stated in a conciliatory tone that removal of censure was important, President Killeen, according to…
On June 2, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, held a hearing on “First Amendment Protections on Public College and University Campuses.” The subcommittee received testimony from four witnesses: Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); Kim Colby,…
Remarks from AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum to the 101st Annual Meeting of the AAUP. It is truly an honor to stand before you today at the 101st annual meeting of the American Association of University Professors, the meeting that is the bookend to the celebration of our centennial. I want to start by reading to…