BY ANTHONY ALESSANDRINI The AAUP’s new “Statement on Academic Boycotts,” which reverses its prior opposition to academic boycotts, is a major declaration. Stating clearly that boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education,” it confirms there are instances in which upholding academic freedom may…
BY NATHANIEL MILLS Joe Lockard’s August 8 Academe Blog post criticizes, with multiple errors and missing contexts, a statement of the executive committee of the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities AAUP chapter. The chapter’s statement protests the role played by nonacademic groups in the UMN administration’s recent decision to block the hire of Raz Segal as…
BY JOE LOCKARD Very few people other than faculty members pay attention to faculty statements directed at administrations. It is rare that they have political impact beyond colleges and universities. We nonetheless write and publish them as instruments for establishing a faculty voice. Therein lies a problem: faculty statements can become blinkered issuances that use…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY At the AAUP Conference and Biennial Meeting last month, one of the most widely discussed sessions featured the presentation of a recent white paper written by Isaac Kamola, director of the AAUP’s new Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023…
BY ALAN SINGER Founded in 1636 as Harvard College, Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Today, as one of the elite American universities, it is at the center of much of the conflict over how a university should respond to protests over the war in Gaza. Claudine Gay…
BY DAVID MOSHMAN Discussions about campus matters related to Gaza, including posts on this blog, have focused on free speech issues associated with campus protests. Let me shift the focus. Universities should indeed support freedom of speech, but their primary function is to seek and communicate the truth, including the truth about Gaza, and their…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH For the June 3rd meeting of Portland State University’s Faculty Senate, twenty-one faculty and staff members submitted the following question for PSU President Ann Cudd: In your remarks to Senate last month and in your email “Evolving Community Expectations” on 5/7/2024, you refer to “vile messages” and to ‘”that kind of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Sociologist, antiwar activist, and internationally renowned Marxist thinker Boris Kagarlitsky, a professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics and head of the Moscow think tank The Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements, who was convicted of “justifying terrorism” for remarks he made about Russia’s war against Ukraine and sentenced to…
BY IAN LUSTICK The following is the text of remarks delivered at a rally in support of academic freedom at the University of Pennsylvania on January 22, 2024. First let me say that I have nothing against billionaires. While I can’t say that some of my best friends are billionaires, I can say that, from…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY The Georgia conference of the AAUP recently published its semi-annual newsletter and I thought readers of this blog might be interested in one element of it. The conference asked from the state university system all complaints concerning academic freedom and freedom of speech submitted to the system’s confidential ethics hotline within the…