Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of educational policy and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is under fire for tweeting to some incoming freshman an article about the budget cuts and attacks on tenure at her institution. The campus College Republicans started a campaign denouncing her tweets as “disgusting and repulsive” and declared, “The…
Earlier this year, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Governors ordered the closing of the law school’s Poverty Center in an act of political retaliation against its outspoken director, Gene Nichol. The AAUP condemned the decision. This month, Nichol announced that Center would be replaced by the new North Carolina Poverty Research…
Northwestern University has recently attracted attention for the attempts to silence a controversial medical journal it publishes called Atrium. I’ve previously criticized Northwestern for its failure to protect academic freedom in cases of sexual content. Sadly, the efforts to suppress Atrium seem to be part of a disturbing pattern. Last year, Northwestern professor Alice Dreger, author of…
The following comes from the July 2 edition of the San Bernardino Press-Enterprise: San Bernardino Community College District Chancellor Bruce Baron has said the district will not require instructors to place disclaimers on their course descriptions in the wake of a protest by a student last month. Initially, Crafton Hills College President Cheryl Marshall said…
The following resolution was released by the two organizations on June 30: The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), as the two national scholarly associations devoted to the study of all education and higher education, respectively, affirm the principle that academic freedom, grounded in the tenure…
This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education published an excellent and important article by Beth McMurtrie entitled, “Nearly a Year Later, Fallout From Salaita Case Lingers on Campuses.” It is definitely worth reading, and not just because I’m quoted in it several times. The article also provides an opportunity for some further reflection on the…
Writing for University World News, John Kelly reports on the debate over an academic boycott of Israeli universities that is now occurring in Ireland. Kelly notes that the issue has become prominent in Ireland considerably later than in most member nations of the European Union, 14 of which have governmentally endorsed the boycott. In Ireland,…
According to the Champaign, Illinois News-Gazette, Steven G. Salaita has accepted a position with the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. See here. Most academics rarely recover from a summary dismissal, particularly when ethical and moral sentiments are expressed that induce controversy. Perhaps, the national attention that this tenure travesty generated may have facilitated this positive development,…
Earlier this month a student at Crafton Hills College, a community college in the Los Angeles area, and her parents urged the institution to ban several graphic novels. They complained about four works: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel; YY: The Last Man, Vol. 1, by Brian Vaughan; The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll’s House, by…
The AAUP focuses on academic freedom issues within the United States. Scholars at Risk, an organization based at New York University, focuses on attacks on academic freedom elsewhere in the world—most of which involve actual physical attacks. According to Free to Think, a new report issued by Scholars at Risk as part of its Academic…