University of Oklahoma President David Boren has shut down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, ordered students living there to leave, and expelled two students for leading a racist chant. These actions are a violation of the University of Oklahoma’s rules and, as FIRE points out, punishing these students is “almost certainly unconstitutional.” Some might wonder:…
The Center for Constitutional Rights is reporting that Cornel West is boycotting, in solidarity protest, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over the firing of tenured Associate Professor Steven Salaita for extramural utterances on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza last year: Dr. Cornel West Joins Boycott of Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign over Salaita Firing March 4, 2015, New York – Esteemed…
The Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s law school has been eliminated by the Board of Governors. As the AAUP noted in a statement opposing this move, “centers must be free to sponsor curricular and extracurricular programs and provide services to the public across the broadest…
The following statement was issued today, February 24, by the American Association of University Professors. A media release may be found here. This statement from the national office of the American Association of University Professors is sent on behalf of the local AAUP chapters at University of North Carolina institutions and the statewide North Carolina…
Colleges are usually at the forefront of radical politics [The word “radical” suggests extreme and abrupt change driven by ideological rather than practical concerns. These days there is much more political radicalism on the Far Right than anywhere on the Left], but when it comes to their own privileges they become feudal empires [Loaded language…
A few days ago, a University of North Carolina Board of Governors’ working group recommended shutting down three centers on university campuses, including Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity — even though the center is self-funding. Critics of the decision, including John Charles “Jack” Boger, dean of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law,…
Much of what is coming from the Far Right these days could come straight out of George Orwell or Jonathan Swift. An Oklahoma legislative committee has just voted to forward to the legislature a bill eliminating the funding for Advanced Placement history courses. In fact, the overwhelming demonstration of support for that bill both within…
The uproar about Lee Bebout’s course, English 401, “U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness” at Arizona State University, provides the rationale for that course and, I hope, many more like it. Bebout’s course comes, after all, as white people in the United States are, perhaps, finally looking seriously at something they have long turned away from:…
This post is an addendum to Aaron Barlow’s post on the attacks on Prof. Bebout’s course on “Whiteness,” a post which you should probably read before reading the rest of this post, especially if you are unfamiliar with the controversy. The most obvious irony is, of course, that this sort of virulent response to Prof.…
Lee Bebout, an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, is teaching a Topics in Critical Theory course this semester. From what I can tell, it’s one of those courses passed around from professor to professor based on a proposed theme for the semester, one generally approved by a departmental committee. Bebout’s theme is “U.S. Race…