BY JOHN K. WILSON Last month, University of Mississippi assistant professor of history Garrett Felber was fired in one of the most remarkable attacks on academic freedom in recent memory, a dismissal that violates the First Amendment, academic freedom, shared governance, the faculty handbook, AAUP guidelines, and basic principles of intellectual standards, fairness, and justice.…
BY HANK REICHMAN The termination earlier this month of University of Mississippi assistant professor of history Garrett Felber, ostensibly because he declined to communicate orally with his department chair while on leave, has attracted considerable attention, including an open letter to the administration protesting his termination, which has to date attracted over 5,000 signatures. Because…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The David Horowitz Freedom Center this month announced yet another campaign aimed at censoring free speech on college campuses. The latest effort is a Facebook ad targeting four left-leaning “America-hating” professors that the Horowitz Center claims has reached 100,000 people. One ad warns the University of Washington, “You have an AMERICA…
POSTED BY JOHN K. WILSON We are members of a collective called International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) and are a diverse group of diasporic Indian academics who are deeply concerned about the increasing assaults on academic freedom in India, in particular the attacks on, and incarceration of, anti-caste academics and scholars…
POSTED BY JOHN K. WILSON The following open letter in support of Prof. Garrett Felber, to University of Mississippi Chancellor Boyce and the chair of the history department, was written in response to the news that Felber has been fired as an assistant professor of history. Although this open letter has no connection to the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Back in October when Lora Burnett, a history professor at Collin College in Texas, was hounded by internet trolls for a comment she made about Vice-President Mike Pence’s appearance during the vice-presidential debate, her administration buckled under the pressure and publicly denounced her, ignoring their own policy’s written commitment “to uphold vigorously…
BY MATTHEW W. FINKIN Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson died on November 20 at the age of ninety-one. Matthew W. Finkin remembers her and her service to the AAUP below. Philosophy has lost a luminary. The AAUP has lost a stalwart. I have lost a friend. In philosophy, one need only glimpse at the Encyclopedia of…
BY HANK REICHMAN No sooner had I posted my piece on Scott Atlas, Stanford, and the Hoover Institution than I received from a colleague a link to an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Where Academic Freedom Ends,” by Harvard education professor Julia A. Reuben, also prompted, it seems, at least in part by…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday, Stanford University issued the following statement concerning Trump adviser, “herd immunity” advocate, and Hoover Institution fellow Scott Atlas: The university has been asked to comment on recent statements made by Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who is on leave of absence from that position. Stanford’s…
BY DAVID ROBINSON David Robinson is executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). One of Canada’s preeminent universities could be facing a rare censure by the Canadian Association of University Teachers over accusations the administration caved to outside pressure when it cancelled the appointment of an academic administrator. According to a report…