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. …
The decision of Marquette University to seek the revocation of the continuous tenure, an increasingly common oxymoron, of Associate Professor John McAdams merits academic freedom scrutiny. Whenever an administration seeks dismissal of a tenured faculty member, there is a categorical imperative to examine if academic freedom protection should prevail. An academic freedom inquiry, of course, can…
[Guest Blogger Ira Allen is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University of Beirut.] In November of last year, alongside scholars from around the disciplines, I signed an open letter written by philosopher John Protevi. The letter urged Marquette University to support embattled philosophy graduate student Cheryl Abbate and to “take steps…
An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a conference held at the libertarian Cato Institute promoting a report from the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which concludes that conservative-leaning academic centers on college and university campuses founded by wealthy donors “are not just surviving but thriving.” The report estimates…
From Kansas, the state that gave us the most repressive social media policy in the country, a negative model for defenders of academic freedom everywhere, now comes HB 2234, a proposed piece of legislation that declares: The state board of regents, the board of trustees of any community college, the board of regents of any…