BY JOHN K. WILSON Today, I’ll be speaking on a PEN America panel about “Academic Freedom and Classroom Conduct” along with Jonathan Friedman, Neijma Celestine-Donnor, and Amna Khalid. So I wanted to offer a few thoughts about what academic freedom means in the classroom. Along with freedom of research and extramural utterances, freedom of teaching…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The following is an email interview I conducted with Jonathan Marks, the author of the new book being published today titled Let’s Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education (Princeton University Press). Marks is a professor of politics at Ursinus College, and he will be discussing his book on Thurs.…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ACADEMIC SENATE’S UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM The following statement from the University of California faculty senate Committee on Academic Freedom was sent on December 23, 2020, unanimously endorsed by the Academic Council at its January 2021 meeting, and forwarded to the University of California provost on Feb. 4, 2021…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The firing of Garrett Felber by the University of Mississippi keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Earlier this month, I criticized the reasons offered for his dismissal. And Henry Reichman (who, unlike me, can officially speak for the AAUP) also expressed many concerns. However, now University of Mississippi officials have suggested some…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT For many years, in what now seems the distant past, France was known as the nation that welcomed refugees from authoritarian countries; revolutionary activists, artists, exiled politicians, dissident students, could find sustenance and support in the land of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It is also the country whose philosophers gave us…
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…