Firing Truth Doesn’t Make It Go Away

BY JOHN K. WILSON T.J. Martinson, a widely acclaimed novelist and author of The Reign of the Kingfisher, was hired in April as an Assistant Professor of English at Olivet Nazarene University, a Christian college in Illinois. And on June 28, Vice President Carol Summers informed Martinson that he will not be allowed to teach.…

Large lecture hall

Declaration of the Global Forum on Academic Freedom, Institutional Autonomy, and the Future of Democracy

BY THE GLOBAL FORUM ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM, INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY, AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY June 21, 2019 DECLARATION The Global Forum on Academic Freedom, Institutional Autonomy, and the Future of Democracy was held at Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg on 20 – 21 June 2019 and co-organized by the Council of Europe; the International Consortium…

Knowledge for the Common Good

BY JOAN W. SCOTT At the 2019 AAUP annual conference Joan W. Scott, professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and longtime member and former chair of AAUP’s Committee A, delivered a luncheon address on the theme of “Knowledge for the Common Good.”  The full text of that…

Committee A Report to the 2019 Annual Meeting

BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the report of the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, presented to the AAUP annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on June 15 and to be published in the annual AAUP Bulletin issue of Academe later this summer. Introduction In the past year Committee A reviewed important cases and…

Terminated St. Edward's University professor Shannan Edwards speaking at the AAUP's 2019 annual meeting.

Holding St. Edward’s University to Its True Mission

BY SHANNAN H. BUTLER The following remarks were presented on Saturday, June 15, at the AAUP’s 105th annual meeting, which voted to place St. Edward’s University on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations. You can read the report of the AAUP’s investigating committee here.  In all honesty, I do not wish to be here today. Please…

NYU AAUP Statement on Steven Thrasher Case

BY THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CHAPTER OF THE AAUP The AAUP is not solely a faculty organization. It exists to protect the speech of all members of the academic community, and it must speak in defense of student voices, who are among the most vulnerable, and often the most subject to censure from university administrators.…

view of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn on a cloudy winter day

A Letter to the CUNY Chancellor

POSTED BY JOAN W. SCOTT In March, Rachel Ida Buff published an Academe Blog post recounting the attacks by the Canary Mission and others on faculty at Kingsborough Community College. In response to the attack, a group of faculty, staff, and graduate students decided to greet the incoming chancellor, Felix Matos (a “veteran” administrator in…