Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the controversy surrounding the decision last November by the Board of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies to reject a proposed fellowship program named for the prominent scholar Stephen F. Cohen and his late mentor and friend Robert C. Tucker, apparently because of…
It may sound very far-fetched, but unfortunately it is not as far-fetched as you might assume. Today the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story on Noel Ignatiev, a faculty member at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Ignatiev is the author of How the Irish Became White, and he publishes the journal Race…
Guest blogger Arianne Shahvisi is an assistant professor of philosophy at the American University of Beirut, and has recently written commentary for the New Statesman, Jacobin, Open Democracy, and Truthout, centered on issues surrounding race, class, gender, and borders. Last month, Saida Grundy, an incoming sociology faculty member at Boston University, tweeted a set of remarks…
Since today is Bertrand Russell’s birthday (he was born in 1872), I wanted to share this short segment from my dissertation on the history of academic freedom about Russell’s firing from CCNY and the first court case to mention the words “academic freedom”: A turning point in academic freedom came in 1940. That year marked the…
By Andrew Scheinman A few weeks ago, the AAUP released its Report on the Steven Salaita affair at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), in which it concluded that UIUC and its Chancellor Phyllis Wise violated Salaita’s academic freedom and committed serious breaches of governance when they “un-hired” Salaita by Wise’s not forwarding his hire…
On January 30, I posted an item to this blog under the title “The Troubling Case of Professor Stephen Cohen and the American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.” The post recounted the background to a decision by the Association’s Board to reject an offer by Professor Stephen F. Cohen, his wife, Katrina vanden…
From the Conclusions of the report, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Felician College (New Jersey)”, May, 2015: In terminating the appointments of sixteen fulltime faculty members, seven of whom sought the Association’s assistance, the administration of Felician College attributed its action simply to “the exigency of the college’s financial status” without any further explanation. The administration’s…
What follows is an open letter from the President Robert A. Brown of Boston University in response to the controversy surrounding “anti-White” tweets made by incoming assistant professor of African-American Studies Saida Grundy. I could be wrong, but I believe that in reaffirming the university’s stance against racially charged language and attitudes, President Brown quite…
The following is an edited transcript of remarks given by Noam Chomsky via Skype on 4 February 2014 to members of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Robin J. Sowards prepared the transcript and there was additional editing by Noam Chomsky. While our New York-minute society may recoil at a post that…