BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I posted the first in a series of posts on the free speech rights of invited campus speakers. I fully expected to devote much of today to preparing the next installment. But this morning Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos delivered the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University, an historically black institution in…
BY HANK REICHMAN “A university without student protests against visiting speakers would be like a forest without birds.” — Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World, p. 155 This is the first of three four posts in a series. The issue of the right of controversial and sometimes deeply offensive invited…
BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY Responding to reports that the University of North Carolina Board of Governors is considering barring centers on the university’s campuses from providing legal representation, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum released the following statement today: Founded in 2001 by the legendary African American civil rights attorney Julius Chambers, the UNC Center for Civil Rights…
BY KENNETH S. STERN AND ERNST BENJAMIN This is a guest post by Kenneth S. Stern and Ernst Benjamin. Kenneth S. Stern is the Executive Director of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation, and a Fellow of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College (where he has taught a course on antisemitism as a Visiting…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On May 4, a judge ruled in favor of Marquette University, taking the extraordinary step of granting summary judgment against professor John McAdams, who currently faces permanent suspension without any due process for having the wrong opinions about his earlier suspension. I have been an expert witness in the McAdams…
BY DON ERON This guest post comes from remarks by Don Eron at the April 29 Academic Freedom Symposium at the University of Colorado Boulder. Don Eron is a retired University of Colorado Boulder writing instructor and a member of the national AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The AAUP I’d like to talk about…
BY DON ERON Guest blogger Don Eron is a retired University of Colorado Boulder writing instructor and a member of the national AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. As higher education budgets shrink, partisanship increases, and social media magnify and distort messages, the state of academic freedom in Colorado and across the country will be…
BY LAURA MARKWARDT This weekend’s science marches on Earth Day shook the world. Scientists, parents, children, educators, and others took to the streets for powerful mobilizations including teach-ins, dancing, and, of course, marching. Michael Mann, member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and leading climate researcher at Penn State, spoke and…
BY ERNST BENJAMIN Ernst Benjamin served the AAUP as general secretary (1984-1994) and in several other roles. A former Wayne State University faculty member, he is the author of numerous articles on academic freedom and other higher education issues and has edited three books, most recently Academic Collective Bargaining (with Michael Mauer). Discussions of threats to…
BY BILL MULLEN The Modern Language Association, one of the largest academic organizations in the world, voted by a margin of 101-93 in the Delegate Assembly in January to support a resolution declaring that the organization would not boycott Israeli Universities. The resolution now goes to a vote of the general membership this week. If…