BY AARON BARLOW My embarkation on an academic career coincided with the rise of what we now call “social media,” then known as “the blogosphere.” At that time, many involved online cloaked themselves in anonymity in the mistaken belief that they couldn’t be discovered. That made me uncomfortable: There are many legitimate reasons for masking…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled in favor of John McAdams in his case against Marquette University, with the majority writing, “We conclude that the University breached the Contract by suspending Dr. McAdams for exercising his contractually protected right of academic freedom.” The Court ordered, “we hold the University to its…
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 16 and to be published in the annual AAUP Bulletin issue of Academe later this summer. Introduction In the past year Committee A published several policy documents…
BY JOERG TIEDE Delegates to the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors voted today to remove the University of Iowa from the list of sanctioned institutions as well as to remove Stillman College from the list of censured administrations. The AAUP places academic institutions on the sanction list for serious departures…
BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN Joe Knott, a member of the Board of Governors of the UNC system, wrote in a News & Observer op-ed on May 25th that UNC-Chapel Hill’s faculty suffers from lack of “viewpoint diversity,” by which he means too few conservative professors for his liking. How does he propose to fix this alleged…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Joe Knott, one of the Republicans who dominate the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, published an op-ed on May 25 that imagines an alarming future for higher education under the headline “We need more conservative professors. Here’s how we can do that at UNC.” Knott generously declares his support for…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The case of Jay Smith, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor whose course on college athletics was quashed by university administrators, has received considerable attention because it raises serious questions about academic freedom. Yet, as recent events attest, the case is also important on shared governance grounds. Specifically, it…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last month I had the privilege and honor of addressing a colloquium of faculty and advanced graduate students at the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP), Russia, which offers advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences. My topic was “The AAUP and the Struggle for Academic Rights in the U.S.” The…
BY HANK REICHMAN In November 2017 the AAUP released a report on National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, which decried “increasing restrictions on and threats to the global exchange of scientific research and the academic freedom of American scientists to interact with foreign colleagues,” especially those from China. Now the Trump administration…
BY JOERG TIEDE An investigative report is out today in a case that crystallizes the current right-wing assault on higher education. It involves issues that the AAUP has been working on intensively this year: faculty harassment and exaggerated controversies over free speech on campus. The case concerns Courtney Lawton, a graduate student and part-time lecturer…