BY JOHN K. WILSON The president of Franciscan University of Steubenville has openly announced that a book will be banned from being taught at the university, and all books at the university will be scrutinized to ensure that “scandalous materials” are prohibited. It’s a shocking case of censorship and a clear example of the suppression…
BY ROBERT BIONAZ After four-plus years, our First Amendment lawsuit against the unethical practices of the lead defendant, former Chicago State University president Wayne Watson, finally ended with the school agreeing to pay $650,000 in attorney’s fees and damages. Additionally, Chicago State likely paid close to $1 million to the private law firm that defended…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and the co-author of the infamous recent “Sokal Squared” hoax against academic journals, was “found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct,” according to Inside Higher Ed. Some people wrongly think that Boghossian is guilty of fraud…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, was having a quiet sabbatical, spending it as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, until someone looked up his many controversial writings. Now a petition signed by more than 4,400 (and supported by the Daily Northwestern editorial board) is demanding “Ban…
BY HANK REICHMAN In an opinion piece posted today on The Hill, Varsha Koduvayur, a senior research analyst specializing in Gulf States issues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute, argues that the Matthew Hedges affair “should be a wake-up call for universities.” Hedges is a British researcher who last…
BY HANK REICHMAN On December 5, the University of Mississippi Faculty Senate unanimously passed a resolution to reaffirm the university’s commitment to academic freedom. The move came in response to growing concerns about the commitment of the administration and the chancellor to the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, formulated jointly by…
BY LLUIS DE YZAGUIRRE I MAURA In the last few weeks, academics from all over the world have expressed their deep concern about the decision by the Spanish judiciary to prosecute two political science scholars and two law scholars based at three different universities in Barcelona. To draw attention to this fact they have published…
BY HANK REICHMAN Two faculty members dismissed from their positions in apparent violation of their academic freedom have won restitution. A professor in Kentucky, who had criticized the governor’s Medicaid plan, won a substantial financial settlement and a return to his university, while a California community college professor fired for challenging student beliefs about sexuality…
BY HANK REICHMAN A little more than a year ago the AAUP released a report, “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom,” prepared by a subcommittee of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The report documented “the Trump administration’s alarming hostility to science” in international scientific exchange and the field of climate…
BY HANK REICHMAN On December 1, Central European University (CEU) announced that, after a lengthy struggle, it would abandon its Budapest campus and relocate to Vienna. “Basically this is a dark day for freedom in Hungary,” said Michael Ignatieff, the president and rector of CEU. “And it’s a dark day for academic freedom.” CEU said…