POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new issue of Academe considers the state of the academic profession in a political climate that has exacerbated existing threats to higher education. Articles focus on challenges to academic freedom and collective bargaining, the recent upsurge in harassment campaigns targeting faculty members, and faculty activism. Follow the links in the table of…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the AAUP report “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom” issued last month readers will find the following: Dr. Eugene Gu is a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University whose research seeks to transplant healthy fetal organs in utero to fetuses with fatal congenital diseases so they can survive to…
BY AARON BARLOW It’s been a bad year. Not just for higher education. And not just at it winds down. The coming 2018 does not bode well for American colleges and universities. For one thing, the Janus case against agency fees (when unions can assess non-members for fees as a result of gains and benefits…
BY HANK REICHMAN George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University, has resigned his tenured position. In an announcement on Twitter posted today, Ciccariello-Maher wrote, “after nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and…
BY WENDY LYNNE LEE There is a great deal to be said about the rise of the Alt-Right over this past year, and while I understand the argument for identifying its platform with the ascent of white supremacism, I’d argue that “Alt-Right” encompasses something far more ambitious and dangerous, especially with respect to the country’s…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Judith Butler’s essay, “The Limits on Free Speech,” has attracted a great deal of attention and numerous comments. Because it deserves a more extensive response than I could make in a comment, I wanted to offer this in-depth reply. I think Butler makes two fundamental errors in her analysis. First, she…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On Friday, Rutgers University demoted professor Michael Chikindas, banned him from teaching any required classes, and announced they would seek to suspend him for a semester, all because of his anti-Semitic comments on his personal social media. Based on his posts, I think Chikindas is an anti-Semite, and an idiot. Nevertheless,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is excerpted from a December 7 article on the website of the Index on Censorship. A group of court reporters scurried along the halls of Istanbul’s massive Çağlayan Courthouse on the morning of 7 December, taking pictures of the tables showing the trial schedules of several high criminal courts…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this week word arrived that Princeton University history graduate student Xiyue Wang, sentenced in July by the Iranian government to ten years in prison for alleged espionage, is being transferred from general detention to Ward 7, a more extreme prison unit run by Iran’s intelligence agency. When Wang arrived there, his…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE In 2016, the AAUP’s annual meeting voted to add The College of Saint Rose to the censure list. The most egregious of the administration’s and governing board’s many transgressions had been the termination of 23 tenured and tenure-track faculty appointments as part of a top-down “academic prioritization” process that eliminated a number of…