Justice Denied to Steven Salaita: A Critique of the University of Illinois Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure Report

I have significant concerns about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure report on the summary dismissal of tenured Associate Professor Steven Salaita in the American Indian Studies Program. The CAFT report states: “The investigative subcommittee interviewed the Chancellor on November 14.” I was able to independently confirm with multiple sources that the…

Debs's Merry Christmas, World War I and the Tarnished Legacy of A.A.U.P. Co-founder Arthur Lovejoy

Christmas Day, 1921, the prison gates opened and Eugene Victor Debs was free at last! Warren Gamaliel Harding, one of America’s most underrated presidents, displayed rare political courage in commuting Debs’s sentence to time served. He was liberated as a persecuted political prisoner from the American gulag that included the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. His “crime” was opposing the draft during The Great War…

"The AAUP's Ludicrous Declaration"

In 1916, the New York Times denounced the newly-formed AAUP’s Declaration of Principles in an editorial that defined “Academic freedom” as “the inalienable right of every college instructor to make a fool of himself and of his college by…intemperate, sensational prattle about every subject under heaven, to his classes and to the public…” (Actually, that’s…

The Ideal of the American University: A Primer (Part 2)

“It need scarcely be pointed out that the freedom which is the subject of this report is that of the teacher,” says the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Freedom.  The 1940 Statement follows up: Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their…

From Great Universities to "Knowledge Factories": Another American Institution in Decline

Thomas Frank, perhaps best known for What’s the Matter with Kansas?, an examination of America’s new conservatism, has an article in Salon, “The New Republic, the torture report, and the TED talks geniuses who gutted journalism.” Toward the end, he writes this: The new press lord’s deeds are all made possible by the shrinking significance of everyone…

Is the AAUP Hypocritical on FOIA Requests?

Walter Olson at Overlawyered (and reprinted at Minding the Campus) argues that the AAUP is hypocritical and left-wing in its approach to Freedom of Information Act requests. However, the evidence he offers simply doesn’t show this. According to Olson, in the case of Douglas Laycock, “the AAUP was quoted in the press talking in a…

"If He Wants to Wreck It, He Can"

In an article today on the debacle at The New Republic, journalist (and former TNR staffer) Michael Kinsley is quoted in reference to new owner Chris Hughes, “It’s his magazine, and if he wants to wreck it, he can.” This could easily become the tagline for the current age. Certainly for the boards of trustees of our institutions of…

On the Job: Stanley Fish on Academic Freedom

‘Academic freedom is in the eye of the beholder.’  That, I think, will be the most common takeaway by readers of Stanley Fish’s new book Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). After all, he breaks the concept into five “schools”: The “It’s just a job” school (his own…

Commercial Intrusion into Academic Space

In their recent November-December Academe article, Jonathan Alan King, Ruth Perry, and Frederick P. Salvucci look into MIT’s decision to build commercial buildings on campus land and make the argument that institutions often put profit before students’ and researchers’ needs. Their article examines the ongoing debate over academic space on campus and talks about how we in…