“Right to Work” Isn’t Going Away, At Least for the Moment

Rand Paul has a new video online that is being distributed by the National Review. He  asks viewers to sign a petition and make contributions in support of national “right to work” legislation. The video emphasizes three points about “Big Labor’s power of forced unionism”: It has crippled America’s competitive edge. It has forced countless…

New AAUP Report on IRB Rules

This is a guest post by Zachary Schrag, a professor of history at George Mason University. He was a member of the subcommittee which released the report discussed below. Professor Schrag also maintains the Institutional Review Blog. A subcommittee of the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has released a new report, Regulation of Research on…

The other gorilla.

I’m a historian, blogger and longtime AAUP member who’s delighted to have the opportunity to post here from time to time on the kinds of issues that concern Academe readers.  While I started off blogging about history, I’ve spent the vast majority of my time at my home blog in the last year or so writing…

Trading Academic Freedom for Foreign Markets

By Marjorie Heins, founder, Free Expression Policy Project The current controversy over Yale University’s planned campus in Singapore is, at bottom, an argument over how much compromise on free speech is justified in exchange for the presumed benefits of locating branches of U.S. universities within authoritarian regimes. Although the champions of global ventures like Yale’s…

Censorship and Cartoons at a Palestinian University

Inside Higher Ed has a fascinating article about calls for censorship at a Palestinian university because a professor put up political cartoons on his office door, the most offensive of which, apparently, depicts “Islamic Superman” with a beard. President Khalil Hindi of Birzeit University responds to the criticism of his administration’s failure to defend academic…

News from the 2012 AAUP Annual Meeting

The 2012 AAUP Annual Meeting and conference on higher education occurred this past week, and it was another interesting event. The AAUP censured 3 Louisiana Universities: Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Northwestern State University and Southeastern Louisiana University. The AAUP also passed a resolution critical of the University of Virginia board for a secret…