BY JOHN K. WILSON Former AAUP president Cary Nelson wrote an essay for Inside Higher Ed last week, arguing that departments issuing statements critical of the Israeli government are violating academic freedom and must be silenced: A department is an administrative entity, an arm of the university. Academic and professional standards for departments exist, such…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Cairn University has announced the elimination of the School of Social Work, prompting the following letter from the National Association of Social Workers: The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its Pennsylvania Chapter have grave concerns about Cairn University’s sudden dismantling of its social work program because of University President…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The easiest way to attract eyeballs to a story about academia is to say that the sky is falling on academic freedom. But is this the most accurate way to frame what’s currently happening in higher education? In “Academic Freedom Is on the Ropes,” his recent article in The Chronicle of Higher…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement in support of fired Associated Press reporter Emily Wilder (Stanford ’20), signed by over 500 Stanford University students, faculty, staff and alums, was published May 24 in the Stanford Daily. A link to the petition form is here. To see the full list of signatories go here. As…
BY HANK REICHMAN Apparently it was all a hoax. Two months ago Boise State University suspended 52 class sections of a required general education class with some 1300 students in what John Wilson on this blog called “one of the largest attacks on academic freedom in American history.” The move came in response to an…
BY JOHN K. WILSON North Dakota has approved a new law to banish abortion rights advocates from public colleges in an extraordinary assault on academic freedom that violates the First Amendment. On May 7, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum made a line-item veto of SB 2030. Gov. Burgum did make a partial veto of the…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a January 2018 political philosophy class at Shawnee State University in Ohio Professor Nicholas Meriwether addressed a trans woman as “sir.” It was an accident, but when the student approached him after class to request that she be called “Ms.” like other women in the class, Meriwether refused, claiming that his…
BY NADINE STROSSEN The following is a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger from Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School, Past National President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship. Dear Lee,…
BY HANK REICHMAN When last October Zoom declined to host seminars at San Francisco State University and New York University because one of the speakers, Leila Khaled, was associated with a group deemed “terrorist” by the U.S. government, which the company suggested might make it legally vulnerable, faculty groups and defenders of academic freedom protested. …
BY GINA TIGRI Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? This question was famously asked numerous times in the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) amid the anti-Communist frenzy known as the Red Scare in the McCarthy era. A new higher education bill was recently…