BY IAN LUSTICK The following is the text of remarks delivered at a rally in support of academic freedom at the University of Pennsylvania on January 22, 2024. First let me say that I have nothing against billionaires. While I can’t say that some of my best friends are billionaires, I can say that, from…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY The Georgia conference of the AAUP recently published its semi-annual newsletter and I thought readers of this blog might be interested in one element of it. The conference asked from the state university system all complaints concerning academic freedom and freedom of speech submitted to the system’s confidential ethics hotline within the…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of my May 15, 2024, keynote address to the international symposium, “Academic Freedom in the Twenty-First Century,” sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundations and the Academia Europaea HERCuLES in Stockholm, Sweden. A slightly expanded version will be published next year, along with other symposium presentations, in European Review. …
BY JENNIFER RUTH Portland State University has no quads on which to pitch tents, but running between some of our major buildings, including the library, are park blocks owned by the city. When threatened with trespassing by Portland Police, the students moved their protest from the grass onto the steps of the library. From there,…
BY ALAN SINGER Academic freedom is often paired with freedom of speech, enshrined in the Bill of Rights as part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. But freedom of speech is not absolute, and neither is academic freedom. Academic freedom is bound by the same legal restraints as freedom of speech, but…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH On April 23, 2024, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee issued the following statement. We condemn in the strongest terms the wave of recent repression of students and faculty engaged in peaceful and principled protest by university administrations across the country. These include the draconian treatment of students by the administrations of Barnard…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF On April 7, Marquette University Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), with full knowledge and consent by the university administration, planted 41,000 flags to symbolize the death toll from the ongoing genocide in Gaza. That night, three Zionist educators not affiliated with the university desecrated the memorial. One of them carried…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH AAUP President Irene Mulvey and the AAUP chapters of Barnard and Columbia released statements regarding Minouche Shafik’s testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee. Below is Mulvey’s statement, followed by the chapters’ statement. Wednesday, before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, President Shafik threw academic freedom and Columbia…
BY HANK REICHMAN As a Columbia alum (College ’69), participant in that university’s 1968 student rebellion, advocate for academic freedom and free expression rights, and as a Jew, I have followed developments at Columbia over the past few days with great interest. On Wednesday came the appearance by the co-chairs of the university’s Board of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Former AAUP President Cary Nelson’s latest book is Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles (Academic Studies Press, 2024). John K. Wilson interviewed him by email about the book in Part I of this discussion. Here in Part II, Nelson examines issues raised since the manuscript was completed last…