The American Association of University Professors censured Northeastern Illinois University at its annual meeting this past June. The annual meeting launched the centennial celebration of the Association’s founding. The censure was an appropriate sanction for the tenure denial of John Boyle, a linguistics professor at the university, who has since moved on to another institution.…
This is a letter from the University of Iowa AAUP chapter to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise seeking reinstatement of Professor Steven Salaita. It is admirable that an AAUP chapter from another campus would engage itself in this manner. I think chapter solidarity in upholding AAUP principles and statements is essential in affirming the…
Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog that asked, “Is ‘Incivility’ the New Communism?” In that post I suggested that recent attempts to enforce standards of “civility” at colleges and universities, often, as in the Salaita case at Illinois and the Marzec incident in Ohio, in response to pro-Palestinian expression, recalled previous…
This report was drafted by a subcommittee of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in August 2014 and has been approved by Committee A. A current threat to academic freedom in the classroom comes from a demand that teachers provide warnings in advance if assigned material contains anything that might trigger difficult emotional responses…
The following is a media release issued today by the Rider University (New Jersey) AAUP: The faculty of Rider University is standing in solidarity at the beginning of the fall as contract negotiations, which started in the summer and continue with little progress being made. The administration has put forth draconian proposals that will negatively…
The influence of outside money on education has always been strong–and fighting it is one of the reasons the AAUP came into existence. Rarely, though, do we educators have real power over the source of that money. In the case of Pearson, however, we can have just that. The company makes a good deal of…
If you want to engage your students in a thoughtful debate about public discourse in the age of Facebook and Twitter, you can of course use the ten or twelve excellent posts that John K. Wilson, Hank Reichman, Michael Berube, and others have made to this blog on the Steven Salaita case. If you would like…
The AAUP today wrote to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chancellor Phyllis Wise to express deep concern about actions taken against professor Steven Salaita. “Aborting an appointment in this manner without having demonstrated cause has consistently been seen by the AAUP as tantamount to summary dismissal, an action categorically inimical to academic freedom and due process…
In a major victory for faculty and staff and for reproductive rights more generally, the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has reversed a previous decision to allow two Catholic universities to eliminate coverage of most abortions for employees, declaring that state law requires health insurance plans to cover all abortions. The state had previously…
By Nicholas Burbules, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I want to thank Mr. Wilson for sending us his posting on “Shared Governance and the Salaita Case” and inviting us to respond. Joyce Tolliver and I do call for an honest debate in our editorial. We fully accept that there are serious, principled positions on different…