POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following letter in support of the University of North Carolina Law School’s Center for Civil Rights, which the university’s Board of Governors has threatened,was sent on Tuesday. To: The University of North Carolina, Board of Governors Date: July 11, 2017 We write to you in our capacity as law professors,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The plenary panel at the 44th Annual Conference on Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, held March 27 at CUNY Graduate Center in New York, was devoted to “The Impact of Anti-Intellectualism on the State of Higher Education.” The panelists were Susan Jacoby, the best-selling author of The Age…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On June 14 the AAUP and the Newseum co-hosted a symposium on current challenges to free expression on college campuses, the First Amendment’s role and the future of the student press at American universities. The program consisted of two panels, one on free speech and the second on the student press. …
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT On Defending UNC-Law School’s Civil Rights Center Against a Political Attack North Carolina has, in recent years, been subject to increased political meddling in its higher education system. After the attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Poverty Center, the Board of Governors has now trained its sights…
BY HANK REICHMAN Right-wing media organizations and some conservative faculty members often have been quick to condemn student protesters and allegedly “leftist” faculty members for their efforts to disrupt or silence conservative speakers as well as for their sometimes silly demands for so-called “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” Much of this criticism is well-merited; even…
NOTE: These two letters were read to the audience directly prior to the votes to censure Community College of Aurora and Spalding University at the AAUP Annual Meeting, June 17, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Statement from Nate Bork Community College of Aurora, Aurora, Colo. Prior to AAUP’s presence in Colorado, all higher education faculty in…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a February 2016 post, “Academic Freedom Threatened in Poland,” I reported on how academics in Poland were coming to the defense of Polish-American scholar Jan T. Gross, Professor of History at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading Holocaust historians, after reports that Poland intended to withdraw a national honor…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of a series of incidents in which provocative and often offensive individuals, mostly from the right side of the political spectrum, have been prevented from speaking at college and university campuses, a number of state legislators have proposed — and a few have passed — legislation that would ostensibly…
The following is the text of a letter sent yesterday to Joanne Berger-Sweeney, urging her to immediately reinstate professor Johnny Eric Williams to his normal faculty duties. Professor Williams, an associate professor of sociology with twenty-one years of service at Trinity College, was placed on leave Monday evening after being targeted with a flood of…
The following statement on the suspension of Professor Johnny Williams was issued by the Executive Committee of the Trinity College AAUP chapter. This morning Inside Higher Ed reports that “Williams said he was told by a dean that he was taking leave whether he wanted to or not, and that Trinity made its decision in…