Australia—Federal Funding for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre at Flinders University In October, Simon Birmingham, the education minister in the new government of Malcolm Turnbull, announced that it would uphold the decision by Christopher Pyne, the education minister under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to withdraw “funding offered to Bjørn Lomborg for the creation of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The AAUP today issued a report on the University of Missouri, condemning the Board’s decision to fire Melissa Click. The full report is well worth reading, and I have previously argued in defense of Click, but I want to make a personal response to the Mizzou Board of Curator’s 10-page letter that it…
Australia—Nikolic, Powell, and Price In March 2015, Michael Powell, a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, wrote an opinion piece published in the Launceston Examiner pointing out that the budget reductions being proposed by the Liberal government would have a devastating impact on higher education across Australia. The Liberal Whip happened to be Alexander…
Like others who post to this blog, I am generally not in favor of academic boycotts. But I don’t have the same reservations about economic boycotts. But, ultimately, my different attitudes toward the two types of boycotts may amount to a distinction without a real difference because I would not try to eliminate anyone else’s…
BY HANK REICHMAN Let’s face it, the pharmaceutical industry has one heck of an image problem. Even if it is recognized that the notorious and now-indicted Martin Shkreli, who raised the cost of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was really an exception, price-gouging and the accumulation of excessive profit are charges regularly and…
The parade of “no confidence” votes directed against University of Wisconsin President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents marched on today as an overflow meeting of nearly 300 UW-Milwaukee faculty voted unanimously to approve a resolution of no confidence similar to ones previously passed at the Madison, LaCrosse, and River Falls campuses. UW Eau…
Canada—Additional Items In May, in an incident not covered in O’Kane’s survey, the president and provost of the University of Saskatchewan were forced out of their positions after they fired a dean for being openly critical of their cost-cutting plans. The dean, Robert Buckingham, was also a tenured professor, and the outcry by faculty…
On May 4, the AAUP released an investigating committee’s report on unilateral actions taken by the administration and board of the College of Saint Rose in New York to reduce or eliminate twenty-seven academic programs and thereby to terminate twenty-three tenured and tenure-track appointments. The report, available here, concludes that the cuts and layoffs, “the result…
Canada—Overview In late October 2015, the Globe and Mail published a substantial article by Josh O’Kane treating the major academic-freedom issues in Canada that had arisen in the first ten months of the year: “Academic freedom has earned plenty of headlines in Canada this year. Dr. Duchesne’s case made waves in January. In May,…
Yesterday the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Ray Cross, president of the University of Wisconsin System, and in the system’s Board of Regents. The vote followed the board’s rejections of proposals made by faculty groups that would protect academic freedom in new system policies on tenure…