Safety, Secrecy and Security
If college campuses are to be safe spaces, the goal needs to be to make them safe for everyone—even faculty. With tenure reduced and enfeebled and secret investigations commonplace, I have seen seasoned professors tremble with fear. They feel unsafe and unsupported by administrators and staff and have seen how processes meant to protect can…
Moving Tenure
Writing under the pseudonym “Aurora Dagny,” a Canadian activist offers four pieces of advice for those working for any sort of cause: “Embrace humility…. Question yourself as fiercely as you question society.” “Treat people as individuals. For instance, don’t treat every person who belongs to an oppressed group as an authoritative mouthpiece of that group as…
Denial of Entry to Professor Troubling
The following is the text of a statement released earlier today by the American Association of University Professors on the denial of entry to the emirate of Abu Dhabi to NYU Professor Andrew Ross. Not long after the statement was issued, news arrived of another incident involving a faculty member in Abu Dhabi. According to…
The Case for the Public Intellectual as Gadfly
Andrew Bacevich, political-science professor at Boston University, has posted a new essay, “Rationalizing Lunacy: The Intellectual as Servant of the State.” It’s a look back at the role of the public intellectual within the U.S. federal government since the time of the New Deal, focusing particularly on their impact on foreign policy, the Vietnam War in specific…
From Retraction Watch: Yes, We Are Seeing More Attacks on Academic Freedom
Alice Dreger has a new post on Retraction Watch. She writes What are we to do? Well, I believe we as university-based researchers should at least be quite concerned when academics have to worry about being “off-brand.” We should, I think, be pretty agitated when a university professor has to pay $50,000 to defend his academic…
Why Punishing Students for Racism at the University of Oklahoma Is Wrong, and Unconstitutional
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:…
Cornel West Cancels Thulin Lecture in Protest of Salaita Firing
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…
A Political Attack on a North Carolina Center
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…
AAUP Statement on the Proposed Closure of the University of North Carolina Law School Poverty Center
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…