BY AAUP STAFF In her January–February 2015 Academe article, “Investigative Procedures in Academic Freedom and Tenure Cases,” Debra Nails describes the AAUP’s procedures for academic freedom and tenure investigations, in which dedicated member-volunteers work closely with staff to produce widely respected reports that treat serious violations of the AAUP’s principles and standards. Using her own…
BY AAUP STAFF In the January–February 2015 Academe issue, Ann H. Franke provides an overview of the AAUP’s century-long role in upholding and protecting the principles of academic freedom and tenure. In her article, “A Century of Change,” Franke offers her thoughts about “how things have been going and where they may be headed with that…
The Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago has issued a report explaining why a university must have “lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation.” The Committee was apparently created partly in response to a petition by a group of University of Chicago students, asking that the Institute of Politics ban…
This is the first post in what I hope will be a series, in which conference and chapter leaders comment on the issues that they are trying to address and the initiatives that they are trying to organize and to promote. I intend to contact conference or chapter leaders directly to invite them to participate,…
The CAFT report on the Salaita case has sparked another debate about whether donors influenced the decision, with Steven Lubet and Liel Leibovitz arguing that the report refutes the idea of donor influence, and Phan Nyugen and Peter Kirstein rejecting those arguments. In one sense, the question of whether Phyllis Wise was influenced by donors…
The issue of possible donor influence in the Steven Salaita contract-revocation case is significant because on-campus personnel decisions should not be influenced by external actors. Academic freedom and shared governance are severely attenuated if universities and colleges outsource, and are unduly influenced by off-campus forces intruding into personnel and hiring processes on campus. Remember Alan Dershowitz and the…
One of the most influential books on my own vision of academia and American life is Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Though I have serious reservations about parts of it, I return to the book again and again. Not surprisingly, I thought of it once more, today, when I read Patricia Williams’ article in The Guardian,…
The Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT), part of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Academic Senate, issued a report on Dec. 23 about the Steven Salaita case. The CAFT report makes some extraordinary good points, along with a few very bad arguments. Overall, though, it is a firm repudiation of the University of Illinois…
I received permission from Gregory Scholtz, Director, A.A.U.P. Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance, to release this letter: December 30, 2014 Dr. Phyllis Wise Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Swanlund Administration Building 601 East John Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Dear Chancellor Wise: The approval and December 23 release by the UIUC Senate Committee…