BY KEVIN HOWLEY Call me cynical, but any piece of legislation or policy prescription that receives bipartisan support these days gives me the willies. When Democrats and Republicans agree on anything, it usually involves bloated military budgets or, in the case of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, doubling down on roads and bridges in the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH It’s worth highlighting an AAUP toolkit from the past in light of these two alarming articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education — “Public University Curricula are Government Speech, Florida Says” and “It’s Not Clear Whether Public-College Professors have First Amendment Rights When They’re Teaching”: The AAUP Action Plan for Protecting an…
BY HANK REICHMAN One of the country’s most prominent evangelical Christian activists, Karen Swallow Prior holds a PhD in English Literature from the University at Buffalo, taught for two decades at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and is currently Research Professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In May,…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Last week, I interviewed Professor Shiu Wen-tang (許文堂), President of the Taiwan Association of University Professors. Given the attention in America paid to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit and the aftermath (namely, Chinese military aggression), it seemed an apt time to introduce readers to the faculty organization in Taiwan dedicated to Taiwan’s…
BY HANK REICHMAN Seven professors and a college student in Florida’s public higher education institutions filed suit yesterday to block a new state law that Governor Ron DeSantis calls the “Stop WOKE Act” and which curtails instruction about race and gender as well as much race-based expression in private business. The Florida and national branches…
BY ALEX ZUKAS In the latest act in a continuing coup against the faculty at National University that started in spring 2020, the interim president and board of trustees just imposed a faculty handbook that defines academic freedom and shared governance in ways that are unrecognizable to AAUP members as it completely hollows out those…
BY JENNIFER RUTH China’s retaliation for Nancy Pelosi’s trip continued last week, as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a second wave of live fire drills around Taiwan. “China has threatened Taiwan militarily for years, and it continues to upgrade its efforts,” Taiwan’s foreign minister Joseph Wu said at a press conference on August 9th.…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The education gag orders sweeping red states are being challenged in the courts on First Amendment grounds. This makes sense and we must hope that all such challenges prove effective. The reality, though, is that the anti-CRT and “divisive concepts” legislation directly attacks academic freedom. As AAUP President Irene Mulvey recently tweeted…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In “Adjunct and Tenured Faculty Must Unite to Resist Pandemic Opportunism on Campus”, a piece I wrote recently for Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt and Bertin M. Louis Jr.’s “Challenging the Corporate University” special series in Truthout, I argued that “it has become clear that adjuncts and tenured faculty alike will only be able to…
Note: At the end of April, the editors of the Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, penned an editorial supporting BDS and Palestinian liberation. In response,150 members of the Harvard Faculty wrote a statement criticizing the editorial. Another group of faculty penned their own response, which was published in the Harvard Crimson. This letter is…