Statements of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Resignation of President Magill and the December 5 Congressional Hearing

BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF AAUP-PENN The following statement was issued by the executive committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter on December 9 in response to the resignation of Penn President Elizabeth Magill following her much-criticized testimony before a Congressional committee. In recent months, trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have…

map of Florida with red pushpin stuck into the center of the state

AAUP Florida Investigation Report Released, Press Conference Held at Florida Capitol

BY JENNIFER RUTH Yesterday, the AAUP announced the release of Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System. The fifty-three page report represents almost a year’s worth of work by dedicated staff and volunteer leaders and incisively lays out the ramifications of political interference for the survival of basic AAUP principles of…

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In Defense of the AAUP Statement on Polarizing Times

BY JOHN K. WILSON It’s always distressing during contentious times when neutral statements for free speech are twisted beyond recognition with false smears of bias and bigotry. In a November 27 essay in The Hill, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet denounced the American Association of University Professors for a November 15 statement, “Polarizing Times Demand…

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Demonizing Dissent

BY KEVIN HOWLEY In recent weeks, college students across the country have raised their voices in support of the Palestinian people, whose collective punishment at the hands of the Israeli government and their enablers in the United States and across Western Europe is both shameful and horrific. For conservative culture warriors, pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college…

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Academic Freedom and Its Worldly Character

BY RUBÉN MARTINEZ Crises in intellectual and religious thought have been opportunities for the reformulation of the basic principles and ideas of existing bodies of knowledge for decades. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realism raised the specter of the destructive character of accepted theories of law. In the 1960s, Vatican II, the twenty-first Roman…

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Journal of Academic Freedom Explores Landscapes of Power

POSTED BY THE AAUP We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 14 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, “Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom,” invited scholarly articles investigating the links between social power and the historical development and contemporary status of academic freedom. Seeking submissions that would build on…

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The Israel-Palestine War and Academic Freedom

BY ELLEN SCHRECKER As the tragic conflict unfolds in Israel and Gaza, the AAUP may now face attempts to fire pro-Palestinian professors that could make earlier academic purges look like a tea party. I know whereof I speak. I have studied academic freedom and higher education for over forty years and traced the AAUP’s failure…