I’m going to disagree with the arguments in Aaron Barlow’s post earlier today about the meaning of academic freedom. When Patrick Deneen described academic freedom as permitting “the airing and defense of any and all views,” I think he was absolutely right (although Deneen did it in order to criticize academic freedom, arguing that “academic freedom…
By a 94%-6% margin, the AAUP chapter at Portland State University has voted to strike on April 16 if substantive progress has not been made in their contract negotiations with their administration. They ask that you show your support for that vote by signing this petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/i-stand-with-the-educators-academic-professionals-at-psu They were initially hoping to get at least…
Peter Kirstein notes on his blog about an important development in a recent case: “Columbia College in Chicago is offering two sections of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict course in their fall 2014 semester offerings. Instructor Iymen Chehade has been in the middle of a major academic freedom case concerning a prior reduction of sections of this…
This is a post by John McNay, President of the Ohio Conference of AAUP and the author of Collective Bargaining and The Battle of Ohio: The Defeat of Senate Bill 5 and the Struggle to Defend the Middle Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) [http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Bargaining-Battle-Ohio-Struggle/dp/1137339179/ref=la_B001KI3NOG_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396230324&sr=1-1]. _________________________ Three years ago, on March 31, 2011, the Republican-dominated Ohio legislature passed…
In the Michigan Senate, the Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee included in its budget proposal a penalty against any public college or university that teaches a labor-related course or offers a labor-studies program. Michigan State University has been considering an agreement to adopt a portion of programming from the National Labor College. A spokesperson for the…
Guest Blogger Douglas Boyd is a Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston. The 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities” (adopted by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) (http://www.aaup.org/report/), the Association of Governing Boards of Universities (AGBU), the American Council…
Guest Blogger Beth Evans is an Associate Professor of Library Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Whether you believe that a library on your campus supports learning and research through print and electronic collections, or that the information literacy skills learned through research are integral to a college education, your…
Matthew Abraham’s new book, Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine, examines intellectual freedom and the Israel-Palestine debate in America. Illinois Academe editor John K. Wilson conducted this interview via email with Abraham, who has served on the Illinois AAUP Council and the Illinois AAUP’s Committee A.
The Ohio Conference of AAUP (OCAAUP) has joined such groups as the Ohio Education Association (OEA), Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), New Faculty Majority (NFM), Ohio Part-Time Faculty Association (OPTFA), and Ohio Student Association (OSA) in forming a statewide advocacy group on issues related to higher education. After taking some time to create an operating…
In a terrific essay explaining “Why We’re On Strike,” University of Illinois-Chicago professors Lennard Davis and Walter Benn Michaels wrote this about their institution’s flawed shared governance system: “To call shared governance real governance is like saying your dog has an equal say in how your household is run because sometimes when he whines he…