Florida’s and China’s Viewpoint Monitoring Laws

BY THOMAS A. BRESLIN Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and his allies have used conflict-of-interest policies meant to keep China from poaching American intellectual property to muzzle Florida’s public college and university professors. So doing, they’ve managed to deny the public access to the expertise of public university and college faculty members, threatened public health, put…

Freedom and Responsibility

BY HANK REICHMAN With freedom comes responsibility.  That old maxim is frequently heard in controversies involving academic freedom.  Too often it is taken simply to suggest that such freedom carries with it the responsibility to limit the degree to which freedom is exercised.  Don’t rock the boat, we have been warned, if we don’t want…

Welcome to Rogues’ Gallery University

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday’s launch of a new “university,” the so-called University of Austin (or UATX; their own acronym, which looks more like a listing on the stock exchange), garnered widespread ridicule on academic social media.  University of Rhode Island historian Erik Loomis no doubt spoke for many when he tweeted, “Honestly, making fun of…

Gainesville, We Have a Problem

BY STEVEN LUBET Three University of Florida political science professors have sued the university trustees and several officials for violations of the First Amendment and academic freedom, alleging that they had been prevented from “testifying on behalf of voting-rights groups in a lawsuit challenging Florida’s Senate Bill 90 (‘SB 90’).”  In what appeared to be…

small red light on a metal base with the word DANGER above it

Academic Freedom: Dangers and Distractions

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On November 1, Brian Soucek, Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California at Davis, spoke as part of the UC Davis Forums on the Public University and the Social Good on “Academic Freedom: Dangers and Distractions.”  Professor Soucek is the outgoing chair of the University of California’s…

In Defense of Lars Jensen, Part 1

BY JOHN K. WILSON On October 22, I testified as an expert witness on academic freedom at a hearing to dismiss Lars Jensen, a tenured math professor at Truckee Meadow Community College (TMCC) in Nevada. Because I wasn’t able to make my full argument about Jensen’s case (the attorney for the administration opposed my testimony,…

In Defense of Lars Jensen, Part 2

BY JOHN K. WILSON In Part 1 of my defense of Lars Jensen, a tenured math professor at Truckee Meadow Community College (TMCC) in Nevada, I examined why TMCC can’t fire Jensen for his pedagogical choices, or some trivial complaints about his paperwork.  But now I want to focus on the core reason why TMCC…