Rep. Alan Grayson is well known as a progressive advocate in Congress, and a strong supporter of civil liberties. That makes the bill he just proposed even more appalling. On May 30, 2014, the very same day that Grayson passed an important amendment banning funding for prosecuting journalists for refusing to reveal their sources, Grayson introduced H.R. 4776, “To prohibit…
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently issued a new report on disinvitations, which claims that conservatives are almost three times as likely as those on the left to encounter attempts at disinvitation of a campus speaker since 2000 based on an analysis of 192 incidents. Trying to document all the disinvitation attempts…
My wife hates Faulkner. With a passion. So when we got married, there was no problem with my raiding her book collection and appropriating the novelist’s Light in August. I still have the copy, its blue-and-white cover, inside my wife’s signature in a girl’s handwriting, and a few notes made in the margin, mostly dutiful…
University of Oregon President Michael Gottfredson has signed a new policy protecting academic freedom, which is being called one of the best policies in the country for defending academic freedom. The passage of this policy also refutes the false notion that academic unions undermine policy-making by a faculty senate. In this case, the AAUP/AFT union president chaired…
By Bill Ayers (reposted from billayers.org) The call for “trigger warnings”—a recent censorious trend gaining traction on American college campuses—is designed to alert students of any potentially troubling, unsettling, or upsetting course materials. The impetus is benign enough, and the context includes the important recent mobilization to deal seriously with epidemic levels of rape and…
I vividly remember my exact reaction the first time I read about Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). It was, “They can’t be serious, can they? How on earth can anybody teach 30,000 people at once?” Since I had already developed an interest in quality control for online education, I followed every new MOOC development…
Money, the goal of all goals, today is ruining both education and government. When money becomes, as it has, our only measure of value, structures protecting anything else melt before it. As the “business model” is most keenly attuned to profit, it has become the one model for all of our endeavors. In my first “real” job out…
Our own Hank Reichman (click here to see a list of his posts) has contributed to a New York Times opinion section “Room for Debate” spread, “Tongue-Tied on Campus.” Not only is he an important contributor to this blog but Reichman is the AAUP’s first vice president and chairman of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His most…
AAUP members should receive their print copies of the May/June issue of Academe over the next few days. In the meantime, they can read it online–as can anyone else (there’s no paywall around here). If you only know us through the blog, you may find the magazine worth your while. More in depth and carefully prepared,…