BY HARRY R. LEWIS Harry Lewis is Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard College. This essay is reposted from his blog. I used to visit Hong Kong regularly, and also made a few trips to mainland China. One of those trips put me in a provincial…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Last week on Academe Blog, John Wilson argued that one idea proposed by Princeton faculty members who wrote a July 4 letter calling for anti-racist reforms is misguided. The signatories ask Princeton administrators to “constitute a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON More than one hundred professors at Princeton have signed a letter proposing reforms in the wake of Black Lives Matter. The letter contains a lot of good ideas (which I suspect is what the signers support), but unfortunately it also has one particularly bad idea: “Constitute a committee composed entirely of…
BY RABAB IBRAHIM ABDULHADI The author was one of three 2020 recipients of the AAUP’s Georgina M. Smith award, which is given to those who have provided exceptional leadership in a given year in improving the status of academic women or in academic collective bargaining and, through that work, improved the profession in general. Because…
BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today: As the ongoing demonstrations of the past few weeks have shown, our nation is once again being called on to reckon with systemic racism and its impact on Black, Latinx, indigenous, and other people of color. Black lives matter, and the AAUP stands in solidarity…
BY JOHN K. WILSON When Ilana Feldman was appointed interim dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University (GWU) last month, it was an obvious choice. Feldman is a highly respected scholar who was already serving as vice-dean with no complaints about her work. But quickly this became what is probably…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I recorded a podcast with the New American Baccalaureate Project (NAB) in which we discussed academic freedom, both generally and in the context of the extraordinary developments of the past month. It has now been posted to NAB’s website. Here’s how they describe it: As protests spread across the US…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Thursday, May 28, a website called Israel-Academia-Monitor published an “editorial note” entitled “AAUP Losing Credibility over the Palestinian-Israeli Dispute.” It begins: The prestigious academic organization, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), is losing credibility. Founded in 1915, the AAUP has helped to shape the standards and procedures of higher…
BY DEIRDRE FRONTCZAK The following article appears in the current issue of FACCts, magazine of the Faculty Association for the California Community Colleges. It is posted here with permission of FACCC and the author. Deirdre Frontczak is adjunct professor of philosophy at Santa Rosa Junior College and lecturer in marketing and management at Santa Clara…
BY HANK REICHMAN In two remarkable statements issued recently scholars from more than thirty countries, including Germany, Israel and the U.S., have spoken out against efforts by the German government to restrict the academic freedom and free speech rights of artists and scholars suspected of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian…