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…
BY AARON BARLOW In “From Austerity to Attacks on Scholars,” an article for Inside Higher Ed, Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud writes, “I discovered how the people attacking me were organized and trained through right-wing radio programs and websites in the language to use against intellectuals; they were set off like arrows from a bow”…
POSTED BY THE AAUP In an amicus brief filed on Friday, the AAUP emphasized the importance of faculty being able to use controversial language and ideas to challenge students in the classroom, and argued that Professor Teresa Buchanan’s academic freedom was violated when Louisiana State University dismissed her for making statements in the classroom that…
BY NADINE STROSSEN WITH JOHN K. WILSON Nadine Strossen, the former ACLU President (1991-2008) and Professor of Constitutional Law at New York Law School, is the author of a new book, HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press). She will be speaking May 5 at Politics and Prose…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND In a new op-ed* in the Wall Street Journal, Jay Smith, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, comments on reforms to college basketball recently proposed by Condoleeza Rice and her NCAA-appointed Commission on College Basketball. He is skeptical about the commission’s recommendations to address corruption because they…
BY MEMBERS OF YOUNG APPALACHIAN LEADERS AND LEARNERS The guest bloggers, the below-signed members of Y’ALL, are members of the Appalachian Studies Association. This statement was presented to the membership as a whole. Context On Thursday, April 12th, members of Y’ALL (Young Appalachian Leaders and Learners) met to discuss J.D. Vance’s invited participation in a…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The AAUP has joined with the American Council on Education and 32 other higher education groups in submitting an amicus brief on March 28, 2018, to the US Supreme Court opposing the Trump administration’s recent proclamation instituting a travel ban. The current iteration of the travel ban, introduced on September 24,…
BY HANK REICHMAN In February, George Mason University students filed a lawsuit against their school and its fundraising arm, the George Mason University Foundation, in hopes of obtaining grant and gift agreements between private donors and the Foundation. Transparent GMU, the student organization that filed the suit, is worried about the potential for private donors…