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…
BY HANK REICHMAN The question in my title is central to a report released this week by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). Report on the Implications for Academic Freedom in the Case of Andrew Potter at McGill University, prepared by professor Mark Gabbert of the University of Manitoba, has important implications for U.S.…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF Who’s a Bully? Civility, Authoritarianism, and Power in the Contemporary Academy For its next volume, scheduled for publication in fall 2019, the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom seeks original, scholarly articles that consider how “bullying” is implicated in conflicts taking place around discourses of civility and academic freedom. How do admonitions of “civility”…
BY HANK REICHMAN Matthew Hedges On Wednesday, during a court session lasting all of five minutes, British scholar Matthew Hedges was sentenced to life in prison for espionage by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Hedges, a 31-year-old student at Durham University, was arrested May 5 at Dubai airport as he was departing after a two-week…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following is from Politico’s Morning Education daily newsletter: RUTGERS REVERSES RULING ON CONTROVERSIAL FACEBOOK POSTS : After being accused of caving to an “internet mob,” Rutgers University has reversed a ruling that history professor James Livingston was guilty of violating its anti-harassment policy when he wrote posts on Facebook complaining about…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Jorge Tiede has written extensively on this blog and elsewhere about how the AAUP’s commitment to academic freedom was seriously threatened by the general repression of dissent throughout the U.S. during World War I. A recent series broadcast by PBS has emphasized that this repression of dissent stood in stark contrast…
BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, STANFORD UNIVERSITY The punishment of John Cheney-Lippold, a University of Michigan professor who declined to write a letter of recommendation for a student who wished to study in Israel, has grown in a particularly ugly and disturbing manner. Cheney-Lippold is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) that argues…