POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Over the past few years this blog has posted a number of items related to the work of the conservative North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. In March, 2015, John Wilson reported that the center had praised the decision of the University of North Carolina Board of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I thought I was reading a campus newspaper from the 1950s when I saw this headline yesterday in the Chicago Maroon: “Communist Plans To Defy Campus Ban.” Suddenly, the University of Chicago has become the epicenter of several free speech controversies. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to write big…
BY HANK REICHMAN In previous posts to this blog I have criticized the blacklisting activities of two pro-Israel organizations, the Amcha Initiative and Canary Mission. The former group published a list of 218 faculty members in Middle East studies at U.S. colleges and universities who signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Norman G. Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University in one of the most significant academic freedom cases of our time. It haunts many in the academic-freedom struggle, and has left an indelible wound in the Chicago area as many continue to feel the outrage of such persecution and inattention to…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In June the AAUP’s annual membership meeting voted unanimously to place the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, on the association’s list of administrations censured for violations of academic freedom. The censure concerns the action taken on December 11, 2015, by the administration of the college to eliminate twenty-seven…
BY HANK REICHMAN In 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 11, also known as the “campus carry” law, at a shooting range. The law permits the concealed carry of guns in dorms, classrooms, and buildings at state universities and community colleges, while leaving individual schools some latitude to keep parts of their properties firearm-free, extending…
BY HANK REICHMAN Readers of this blog may be familiar with the regular National Public Radio (NPR) feature “Science Friday.” Last week one 35-minute segment, “Science in the Crosshairs,” focused on governmental and other threats to the academic freedom of scientists. It began with fetal tissue research: After furor erupted over a video seeming to…
BY KELLY HAND We’re pleased to announce that the new volume of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom is out today. The Journal publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. Current and past volumes of the Journal of Academic Freedom, which receives funding from the AAUP Foundation,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On Sept. 21, political science professor Jackie Stevens began teaching her class at Northwestern University. Earlier that week, she didn’t know if that would happen. Stevens had been banned from campus (and prohibited from any contact with students) since July 28, when the administration announced she was a potential threat and…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN I was interviewed on Comcast Public Perspectives in the Chicagoland area on academic freedom in July, but they just posted the YouTube video. The half-hour show covers the AAUP Illinois Conference Committee A, the Finkelstein and Salaita cases, the contingent faculty explosion, and the Douglas Crowe case at Bradley University. I speak only for…