BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the University of Wisconsin at Madison began instruction online, a move that the great majority of colleges and universities have made or are making in response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s what English professor Caroline Gottschalk Druschke told the Wisconsin State Journal about the move: “None of us are going…
BY JOEL BERKOWITZ We thought the process would be straightforward. As it turns out, things got twisted. More than once. It all started with a simple invitation. As president of my campus’s chapter of the AAUP, I invited Joerg Tiede, senior program officer and researcher for the national organization, to come to campus to give a presentation of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In December graduate student employees at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) began a wildcat grading strike, refusing to submit fall quarter grades until they get a salary increase. The university administration said that as many as 12,000 students had their grades withheld. Today the strike expanded as student…
BY JOHN K. WILSON When the Annals of Internal Medicine published an article last fall declaring no serious evidence linked eating red meat to health problems, it sparked enormous controversy and criticism from many experts in the field. Now, the critics are being attacked. In an open letter headlined, “Texas A&M Chancellor Calls on Harvard to…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE The higher education news from China late last year was chilling to all who value academic freedom. Three major universities—Fudan, Nanjing, and Shaanxi Normal—under the direction of the government’s Ministry of Education, deleted “freedom of thought” from their charters and added pledges to follow Communist Party leadership, according to reports from Reuters.…
BY HANK REICHMAN Over two years ago, on November 3, 2017, I posted an item to this blog about the ordeal of Georgette Fleischer, a Barnard College adjunct writing instructor who was summarily dismissed from her position after 17 years of successful teaching. Here, from that post, is the background: For seventeen years Georgette Fleischer…
BY JAYATI GHOSH Jayati Ghosh, one of the world’s leading development economists, is professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and executive secretary of International Development Economics Associates (Ideas). She is co-recipient of the International Labour Organisation’s 2010 Decent Work Research prize. For some U.S. press coverage of these events go here, here…
BY HANK REICHMAN In my October Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture at the University of Michigan I argued that “the gravest challenge to academic freedom, one that exacerbates all others, [is] the steady erosion of the tenure system and the concomitant and explosive expansion of contingent, frequently part-time faculty employment,” what some have labeled “adjunctification.” Part-time…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today the AAUP released a statement, In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, prepared by the association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in October and approved by the AAUP Council a month later. An email signed by me was sent to all AAUP members announcing the release this morning. The…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF In case you missed it—and in case you have time to write over the winter break—we’re sharing this call for papers again. The February 3 submissions deadline is approaching quickly! It is remarkable how quickly all strata in public universities—staff, faculty, administrators, students—have grown accustomed to the saturation of…