POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Mexico In January 2015, the Universidad Valle de Mexico campus in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo was “closed for more than a week due to threats and attempted extortion by gangsters”: “The campus closed in response to a threat received from a criminal gang that wanted to enter the…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week’s controversy over Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet about “white genocide” has once again raised the perpetually thorny issue of academic freedom’s claim to protect the “extramural utterances” of faculty members who speak as private citizens. As of this writing it appears that Drexel administrators have disavowed any intent to…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is excerpted from a piece published earlier this month in University World News by Ole Petter Ottersen, rector of the University of Oslo, Norway. How should universities confront a post-truth world? By Ole Petter Ottersen In a world characterised by increasing turbulence and conflict, and of inequities and dissatisfaction,…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following guest post by UCLA history professor Michael Meranze is reposted from his Remaking the University blog. As you have probably seen, George Ciccariello-Maher, a political scientist at Drexel University has come under fire for tweeting “all I want for Christmas is white genocide,” following his tweet and his condemnation at…
BY HANK REICHMAN “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” That was the content of a tweet posted Christmas eve by George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University. Ciccariello-Maher was trying to make an ironic political point and was not in fact calling for mass killing, but that didn’t…
BY GALEN LEONHARDY Guest blogger Galen Leonhardy is an AAUP member living and teaching in Illinois. On December 19, my dear long-time friend, Starla, replied to “UW, WSU Brace for Speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart Editor Banned from Twitter,” a Seattle Times article floating around Facebook. The article’s author, Katherine Long, tells readers that an infamous…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Threats to Academic Freedom from the Government Threaten American Principles MADISON, WI—Dec. 21, 2016 The American Association of University Professors UW–Madison Chapter reaffirms the critical importance of preventing government overreach that would restrict the rights of our students to a high quality education that values and encourages critical thinking. When our…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a victory for both academic freedom and science an appeals court ruled today that climate change scientist and AAUP Committee A member Michael Mann can sue two conservative writers over allegations that they defamed him. The case centers on posts written by Rand Simberg in a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blog…
BY AARON BARLOW According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Republican state legislators in Wisconsin “are threatening to pull any hope of more state funding unless a new course at UW-Madison called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ is canceled.” This, from a movement that claims to want more freedom and less law. One legislator wants to go a step further, scouring “other…
BY JENNIFER H. RUTH This is a guest post by Jennifer H. Ruth, the faculty editor of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom and professor of film studies at Portland State University. Ruth issued a call for papers for the 2017 Volume 8 of the Journal in September, at the time Volume 7 was released. The topics…