In a victory for free speech, the University of Wisconsin at Stout has reversed its earlier decision censoring posters put up by professor James Miller. FIRE, which led the crusade against the censorship, announced the reversal today and posted the letter from leading administrators: UW-Stout has reconsidered its decision to remove the two posters from…
The AAUP announced Friday that an investigating committee will visit Louisiana November 12-15 to look into discontinuance of academic programs within the University of Louisiana system and resulting potential termination of tenured appointments. See the letter announcing the visit. See an earlier statement on reports that the university system had embarked on what appeared to be…
Jane Mayer has an important article in the New Yorker about the influence of millionaire Art Pope in North Carolina politics and higher education. Pope funds the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, where director of research George Leef has been one of the loudest voices calling for the defunding of higher education…
My essay on due process violations at Northwestern University in the cases of David Protess and Michael Bailey appears at InsideHigherEd today. You can read more about the Protess case at my blog College Freedom. Peter Kirstein wrote about academic freedom and the Bailey case at his blog. While the two cases are very different…
It’s always disappointing when advocates of the First Amendment find an excuse to fall short of full freedom. Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center wrote a column last week arguing, “Teachers should have more academic freedom than they presently enjoy. But when religion is involved, teachers should not be free to impose either a…
Today is the beginning of Banned Books Week, and so it’s an appropriate time to report on speakers who are banned by colleges because of their past writings. This week, Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania decided to disinvite Ellen Goodman from giving a speech on campus next month. The right-wing Cardinal Newman Society celebrated the…
In a posting last week on Minding the Campus, Herbert London endorsed an effort to banish anti-Semitism on campus, noting “The Israel Law Center warns that colleges and universities ‘may be liable for massive damage’ if they fail to prevent anti-Semitism. London also praises the Israel Law Center’s reference to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling…
News outlets are reporting today that Adrienne Anderson died on Sept. 7 at the age of 59. Anderson was fired by the University of Colorado in 2005 after 12 years as an instructor in the environmental and ethnic studies departments, an important but overlooked academic freedom case. In 1999, Anderson noted how the University cancelled…
The Navy ROTC has been restored at Harvard in the wake of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ending this week. But don’t expect any major changes, reports the Boston Globe (registration required, alas). The area’s ROTC commanding officer, Captain Curtis Stevens, reported: “It’s really about the numbers. You couldn’t have a viable unit just at Harvard…