Student Media Under Fire
BY HANK REICHMAN Today, the AAUP, the College Media Association (CMA), the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) released a report, Threats to the Independence of Student Media, shining a light on threats to student media and faculty and staff advisers. The report reaffirms and expands upon basic principles…
Saving Academic Freedom from Trump's "Post-Truth" Nation
BY ANDRE PERRY This blog post originally appeared as a column in The Hechinger Report on November 22, and appears here with the author’s permission. Guest blogger Andre Perry is the former founding dean of urban education at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The world is not flat; dinosaurs didn’t walk with humans and white…
Don't Mourn, Organize–Part II
BY AARON BARLOW The first ‘bigly’ Twitter and academic freedom case was that of Associate Professor Steven Salaita just two-and-a-half years ago (there were others earlier, including that in 2013 of Professor David Guth that resulted in a policy instituted by the Kansas Board of Regents that “faculty members and other employees can be fired…
AAUP Chapters Speak Out After Election
BY KELLY HAND Several AAUP chapters have issued statements dealing with the presidential election and its repercussions on higher ed. The University of Connecticut-AAUP issued a statement supporting a statement made last week by the AAUP and the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress. The chapter affirms its “longstanding commitment to inclusiveness, democracy, and academic freedom and…
An Imprisoned Turkish Scholar Speaks
BY HANK REICHMAN The continuing assault on academic freedom in Turkey, which began last spring and intensified after the failed July coup attempt, continues. (For previous coverage on this blog go here.) According to Scholars at Risk, “On October 29, 2016, Turkish authorities issued a decree ordering the dismissal of 1,267 academic personnel, and the…
Free (Or Fettered) to Teach at the Community College?
BY STEVE MUMME The academic freedom wars rage across the country as professors debate trigger warnings, hostile environments, bullying eradication, and multiple other sins infringing on academic speech. The discerning reader will surely have noticed that most of this discourse is located on university campuses, not community colleges. There’s a reason for that. As we at…
AAUP after the 2016 Election
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued today. The AAUP and the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress have never endorsed or supported a candidate for president of the United States or otherwise engaged in partisan political activity on the national level. For over one hundred years the AAUP has vigilantly defended the professional rights…
Thunder in the Rockies
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS The work of our AAUP chapters in Colorado’s community college system has been in the headlines recently and will continue to be so. It shows how the small, sparky things we do (staffing hallway membership tables, distributing our crossword puzzles, bookmarks, fliers, cookbooks, etc.) can lead to lightning bolts of change. Briefly,…
EUA Statement of Solidarity With Turkish Universities and Scholars
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Even before the failed military coup of July 15 in Turkey, concern about academic freedom in that country was growing. On March 30, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum and I issued a “Statement on Academic Freedom in Turkey,” expressing grave concern about attacks on more than 1,000 Turkish scholars. In July numerous…