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…
BY HANK REICHMAN In June 2014 the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued a report, “On Partnerships with Foreign Governments: The Case of Confucius Institutes.” That report warned that Confucius Institutes, then established at some 90 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, may “function as an arm of the Chinese…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following press statement was issued by a group of graduate students at Columbia University, announcing Academic Freedom Week, a series of panel discussions to be held at Columbia April 9-11. Your silence will not protect you. ― Audre Lorde, The battle for academic freedom at our nation’s universities has been…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Earlier this month, Dixie State University (DSU) in Utah announced the suspension and planned termination of music department chair Glenn Webb and director of vocal activities Ken Peterson. But the reasons for this extreme action are quite dubious, and the violations of academic freedom, due process, and DSU policies are alarming.…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m often asked whether the AAUP is as willing to defend the academic freedom and due process rights of right-wing faculty members as we are of liberals and leftists, with whom most of our members tend to be more sympathetic. The answer is that we are and have done so repeatedly throughout…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I had the privilege and pleasure of participating in a terrific panel discussion of “Academic Freedom in an Age of Political Polarization” at the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C. My fellow panelists were Sigal Ben-Porath, Professor of Education, Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and author of…
BY AARON BARLOW Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Tobacco. These are real collusions and they have had impact on all of our lives. But Big Academia? Jack Kerwick, one of David Horowitz’s followers at FrontPageMag, certainly seems to think so. He sees it, from the best I can glean from his confused piece,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last month, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune responding in part to my post defending the rights of Rutgers professor Michael Chikindas. I think Lubet makes two fundamental errors: First, he says anti-Semitic imagery is an act of instigating violence. Second, he argues that administrative…