Professor John McAdams on his blog this week harshly criticizes the Marquette University Climate Survey on sexual identity at the Jesuit institution in Milwaukee. He has every right to articulate his views on this matter, and professors should freely engage in institutional criticism and practices. It is a fundamental right of academic freedom and shared governance. Yet one is free to critique…
On February 6th, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a statement of a policy change headlined “UMass Amherst Procedures on Admission of Iranian Students.” It ends with this: We recognize that these decisions create difficulties for our students from Iran and regard this as unfortunate. Furthermore, the exclusion of a class of students from…
Here’s a headline from today’s New York Times: “Wisconsin Sees Presidential Ploy in Walker’s Push for University Cuts.” Only to be expected, of course: to his critics, Mr. Walker, in both his proposed cuts and his aborted effort to overhaul the Wisconsin Idea, is trying to capitalize on a view that is popular among many conservatives: that…
Two additional documents are now available for those who have been following the controversy sparked by the refusal of the board of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) to accept funding for a dissertation fellowship program from eminent scholar Stephen F. Cohen and his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, because the program…
Associate Professor of Political Science John McAdams released Dean Richard C. Holz’s, January 30, 2015, letter of dismissal. This is the redacted version of the letter of intent to seek a revocation of his continuous tenure. At the top of the document, Professor McAdams, in red letters, informs the reader of the redaction of just two “phrases.” “NOTE: Two phrases…
The News–Gazette reported that Steven Salaita’s lawsuit against the University of Illinois will proceed. The University of Illinois had argued, since the lawsuit had been filed by the professor’s lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights (C.R.C.), and not specifically by Professor Salaita, that the plaintiff did not have legal standing. Judge Chase Leonhard, a Champaign County state judge, issued…
The following talk by Michael Rothberg, Head of the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, was prepared for a Campus Faculty Association forum on shared governance and academic freedom at the University of Illinois in Urbana on February 13, 2015.…
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty Senate has approved a resolution recommending that the administration “promptly” adhere to and implement the recommendations of the December 23, 2014 released Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) report on the Steven Salaita firing. The vote was 51-41 at the February 9, 2015 Senate meeting. We had…
The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued this “media advisory” concerning tomorrow’s lawsuit over open-records claims under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The issue of donor influence on the Steven Salaita summary dismissal case is a key aspect of this struggle for academic freedom and academic due process. The battle for open records, under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, between the University…
The following is the text of a letter to the Executive Committee of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, written by David Ransel, Robert F. Byrne Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, and signed by 126 134 142 additional scholars in the field. The complete list of signatories follows the text. …