The following is a message from Diana Vallera, president of P-Fac, the Part-Time Faculty union at Columbia College Chicago, and a member of the Illinois AAUP State Council: You are invited to join P-Fac and UIC as we kickoff our new Pursuit of Truth Campaign to build a coalition of Chicago colleges and universities. Pursuit of…
Yesterday a guest blogger posted to this site an “Open Letter to Professional Staff Congress (CUNY) President Barbara Bowen.” The leadership of the AAUP has authorized the posting of the following response to that posting: On behalf of the AAUP, we want to stress, as prominently noted on the masthead above, that opinions published on…
The “real problem” behind the exploitation of adjunct faculty is quite obvious: universities have continued to produce a reasonable number of Ph.D.’s but no longer are willing to hire a reasonable number of them into full-time, never mind tenure-track, positions. This situation will change when enrollment in graduate programs starts to contract, and even to…
Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed four lawsuits charging that three state universities and one community college maintain unconstitutional speech codes and have restricted the free speech of students and faculty members. The institutions named in the lawsuits are Citrus College, in California, and Chicago State, Iowa State, and Ohio Universities. …
Writing for the New York Times (June 24, 2014), in a column titled “The Reality of Student Debt Is Different than the Cliches,” David Leonhardt reviews a recent study released by the Brookings Institute. These are the main assertions: (1) Student debt, on average, has actually not increased significantly. (2) Because the earnings of college…
In the continuing standoff between faculty, staff, and students at City College of San Francisco, supported by broad community forces and prominent political leaders, and the Accrediting Commission for Junior and Community Colleges (ACCJC; see my most recent posts here and here; see also my original post of July 8 and subsequent posts on July…
Past president of the AAUP and continuing activist Cary Nelson contributes to the current “Room for Debate” feature in The New York Times, “Lofty Salaries in the Ivory Towers.” He writes: When a college or university president has an annual salary 50 times what some faculty and staff earn, the institution delivers a powerful message about…
The following is the text of the report of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to the AAUP Annual Meeting, delivered by Committee Chair and AAUP First Vice-President Hank Reichman on June 14. The Committee’s official and complete report will appear as part of the annual Bulletin of the AAUP, published annually in the…
At this morning’s 100th meeting of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the AAUP membership voted unanimously to censure Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) for denying tenure to John Boyle without adequate cause and in retaliation for his department’s involvement in criticizing the administration, violating academic freedom and due process. Illinois AAUP Committee A Chair…
Rep. Alan Grayson is well known as a progressive advocate in Congress, and a strong supporter of civil liberties. That makes the bill he just proposed even more appalling. On May 30, 2014, the very same day that Grayson passed an important amendment banning funding for prosecuting journalists for refusing to reveal their sources, Grayson introduced H.R. 4776, “To prohibit…