BY HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR (H-PAD) Right now, public education on all levels in Florida and the rights of the state’s population are under attack by forces led by Governor Ron DeSantis. The governor’s “Anti-Wokeness” campaign threatens to eviscerate honest teaching of United States history and force people of color and the trans and LGBTQ+…
BY DAVID AUDRETSCH, CHRISTIAN FISCH, CHIARA FRANZONI, PAUL MOMTAZ, AND SILVIO VISMARA Academic freedom matters for many reasons. Our new study that is available for free download at SSRN empirically shows that academic freedom can be related to economic growth through more innovation. Examining 157 countries over the 1900–2015 period, the study concludes that academic…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In “Rutgers Unions Prepare to Surf the Strike Wave,” Hank Kalet wrote for the blog about the authorization-to-strike vote to be held at Rutgers. The vote was held and 94 percent of Rutgers AAUP-AFT members voted “yes.” Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway has been using scare tactics to intimidate the Rutgers community. In…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, Stanford Law School announced that it had suspended Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, in the wake of the outrage over the disruption by protesters of a Federalist Society speech by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Stanford must end this suspension immediately. Stanford’s suspension of Steinbach is…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH In a letter to the editor, AAUP president Irene Mulvey responded to a series of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which AAUP statements were invoked to argue for the primacy of either academic freedom or diversity, equity, and inclusion. This framing pits the two against one another, as…
By JOHN K. WILSON Christian Coons, an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, has been suspended and faces a hearing on March 20 that could lead to his dismissal. His crime? Sending emails to his colleagues about his department’s alleged past misconduct in hiring decisions. A university is seriously considering the dismissal…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The Florida Education Association (FEA) and United Faculty of Florida (UFF) have launched the 3-7 challenge. On this page, FEA explains: What is the 3-7 Challenge? March 7 is the start of Florida’s 2023 legislative session, and some elected officials have promised to pass legislation that will limit the fundamental freedoms of…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Three recent pieces are worth reading for insight into Florida HB 999: “DeSantis Higher Ed Bill Heads for the Legislature” (Inside Higher Ed), “New Bill Latest Assault in Florida’s War on Education” (Forbes), and “Never Seen Anything Like it: New Bill Would Write DeSantis’s Higher Ed Vision into Law” (Chronicle of Higher Education).…
BY KELLY BENJAMIN Students from at least nine universities across Florida walked out of class yesterday in protest of Governor Ron DeSantis’s relentless barrage of attacks on the state’s higher education system. The walkouts, organized by the Dream Defenders and Stand for Freedom, came in response to DeSantis’s crackdown on all things “woke” in state education, including…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “Will You Take the Stand?” ask the Florida college students staging a walkout at noon today. In an online pledge form, they write, The DeSantis Administration is proposing to outlaw all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at Florida Colleges and Universities. He has displayed a pattern of behavior in which he Hijacks…