BY HANK REICHMAN Rejecting the recommendations of its Chapel Hill campus chancellor, over 600 law school faculty and administrators, and numerous North Carolinians demonstrating outside, the Educational Planning, Policies and Programs Committee of the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors voted 5-1, with one abstention, August 1 to bar the UNC Chapel Hill…
BY HANK REICHMAN Although, in a victory for academic freedom, the administration of Trinity College acknowledged last month that Professor Johnny Williams’s controversial social media posts “were protected by academic freedom and did not violate Trinity College policies,” a July 31 message to the campus from President Joanne Berger-Sweeney suggests that the school’s administrators still…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Tomorrow, August 1, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (UNC) will consider a proposal to bar the university’s centers and institutes from participating in litigation. The proposal exempts legal clinics, which makes clear that it is really aimed at the activities of one center only: the Chapel…
BY HANK REICHMAN Thomas Haskell, Samuel G. McCann Professor Emeritus of History at Rice University, passed away on July 12 at the age of 78. Professor Haskell was a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1993 to 1996. Among his many publications, he is perhaps best known for two…
BY AARON BARLOW Christine Emba, editor of In Theory, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on July 28, 2017 calling the current mania for ‘outcomes’ a “familiar trap.” She was focusing on politics, particularly on the failure of health care ‘repeal and replace’ but her thoughts apply to education as well. They apply,…
BY RUSSELL RICKFORD This article was originally published by Black Perspectives, and is reposted here with permission. Black Perspectives is a project of the African-American Intellectual History Society. Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the year since the attempted coup in Turkey, a “staggering” number of academics have faced criminal investigations, detentions, prosecutions, mass dismissal, expulsion and restrictions on travel, according to an open letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, signed by Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR), the New…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier today Martin Kich posted a piece on legislation being considered in Congress that, according to an account by Glen Greenwald, “would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel.” While I think this legislation is unnecessary, ill-advised and frustratingly vague, I am skeptical that it is, as Marty argues,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the Intercept, Glen Greenwald reports: The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the…
BY HANK REICHMAN “If there’s an organized outrage machine, we need an organized response.” Those words from Tressie McMillan Cottom, assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, author of the excellent Lower Ed, prolific blogger, and frequent (and often witty) presence on Twitter, headline a story in this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education on…