Will Yale Become More Like Singapore?

BY HANK REICHMAN In 2011 Yale University announced the establishment of a joint venture with the National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS, a four-year, fully residential undergraduate institution.  The venture differs from overseas programs like NYU’s controversial Abu Dhabi campus (see here, here, and here) because it is ostensibly independent of Yale, offering its own degrees. …

Are You on a Blacklist?

BY FRANK BALDWIN The Hollywood Ten knew they were on a blacklist. The House Un-American Activities Committee held televised hearings to vilify screenwriters and other cinema professionals and cited them for contempt of Congress. Studio executives fired the group in a press release, a warning to the film industry that subversives were not employable. Public…

New Journal of Academic Freedom Focuses on Bullying

BY RACHEL IDA BUFF We are pleased to announce the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. The journal features recent scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to contemporary crises of austerity, shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. This year’s contributors draw connections between the multiple frequencies of bullying present on…

From the Golan Heights to Morningside Heights: Local Implications of Israel’s Political Blacklist

BY KATHERINE FRANKE AND MICHAEL ALTMAN-LUPU We have a message for Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar: welcome to the blacklist.  You have joined a growing group of human rights defenders who have been denied entry to Israel and Palestine by the Israeli government because we dared to argue that Israel should comply with international…

Don’t Let the #Bretbugs Bite!

BY HANK REICHMAN The tendency of right-wing “free speech warriors” to apply one standard to speech they agree with and vow to defend, and another less liberal standard to speech they don’t like is well-documented, even old news.  In April John Wilson reported here how even as Republicans rallied behind President Trump’s phony executive order…

No Ethnic Profiling of Chinese Scholars

BY HANK REICHMAN The AAUP has joined with 18 21 other organizations in a statement released today by PEN America in response to reports that the FBI has urged universities to develop protocols for monitoring students and scholars from Chinese state-affiliated research institutions.  The full statement and list of signatories may be found here and…

Free Xiyue Wang!

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Today, August 7, marks the third anniversary of the detention in Iran of Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Wang.  Wang, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S.citizen who previously worked as a translator in Central Asia, was conducting doctoral research on Iran’s Qajar dynasty that ruled from 1785 to 1925 when he was arrested…