BY HANK REICHMAN Greg Lukianoff, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and three co-authors have written a piece, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” discussing the avalanche of proposed and, in some cases, already enacted legislation governing classroom instruction in both higher ed and…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Pennsylvania House Bill 1532, introduced earlier this month, has received widespread criticism after Jeffrey Sachs on Twitter wrote that “not only does it prohibit universities from promoting any of the usual forbidden concepts, it also prohibits them from hosting speakers or assigning readings that do.” If anything, Sachs and other critics understate…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP, joined by more than 90 other groups, issued a powerful “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” And, of course, it’s not only legislation. The continuing controversy over the failure of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees to approve a…
BY HANK REICHMAN In an unprecedented move, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors has refused to re-appoint a respected law professor to the University of North Carolina Press Board of Governors. The reason seems to be the professor’s public statements on the legality of the UNC System’s controversial handling of the Silent…
BY HANK REICHMAN The Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia today (June 21) recognized New York’s Bard College as an “undesirable organization.” According to the ministry, Bard’s activities in Russia “pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security” of Russia. The designation threatens, and may well guarantee, the termination of a longstanding…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last year my book, The Future of Academic Freedom, received the American Library Association’s Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award for best published work for the previous two years in the area of intellectual freedom. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic the awards ceremony had to be cancelled, but now, a year later…
BY DANIEL MORRIS On June 11, 2021, the Purdue Board of Trustees passed a civics literacy requirement for undergraduates despite opposition from the faculty senate. Placed in the context of what happened at the University of North Carolina in April, when, as Lindsie Rank reports, “the board of trustees refused to approve the faculty’s recommendation…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Tom Ginsburg, a professor at the University of Chicago, proposes institutionalizing academic freedom in an opinion essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education this past week: “Colleges must institutionalize the protection of academic freedom by devoting resources to training, establishing standards, and hearing complaints when norms are threatened.” According to Ginsburg,…
BY HANK REICHMAN In November 2017 the AAUP released a report on National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, which decried “increasing restrictions on and threats to the global exchange of scientific research and the academic freedom of American scientists to interact with foreign colleagues,” especially those from China. In 2019, the AAUP…
BY CARY NELSON John Wilson has recently claimed that official anti-Zionist proclamations by academic departments are protected by academic freedom. “A statement is just a statement,” his Academe Blog post concludes, “It’s not an act of oppression.” Wilson was writing in opposition to my own June 3 essay in Inside Higher Education, “Is Academic Freedom…