On the Firing of a Tenured Professor
BY AARON BARLOW On January 20, the University of California Board of Regents took the incredibly rare step of dismissing a tenured professor for cause, a sanction that has occurred only a handful of times in the University’s history. Rob Latham, Professor of English at UC Riverside, was dismissed, over the recommendation of the UCR…
Jordan Kurland
BY HENRY REICHMAN During his 50+ years on the AAUP staff Jordan E. Kurland, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, must have helped thousands of faculty members resist challenges to their academic freedom. Yet because he never sought the spotlight for himself, Jordan and his remarkable work remained largely unknown to most…
The Media View of Academic Freedom, a Century Ago
Today marks the 100th anniversary of a famous editorial in the New York Times denouncing academic freedom, one that I quote in my article about the media and academic freedom in the new issue of Academe. Reacting to an AAUP report about the firing of Scott Nearing by the University of Pennsylvania, the New…
A Crisis in Civic Education?
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a conservative group that has advocated increased activism by college and university trustees and a “return” to “traditional” curricula in Western Civilization and American military, constitutional, and diplomatic history (let’s put aside for now that, given the recent behavior of most trustee boards, these two goals may…
Those Who Pay the Piper Call the Tune
The Charles Koch Foundation has offered Western Carolina University a gift of $2 million in order to establish a Center of Free Enterprise. Mark Jamison, the retired postmaster of Webster, North Carolina, has an excellent op-ed piece in the Smoky Mountain News opposing the donation. He writes: The proposed $2 million gift from the Charles…
Scholars in Turkey Detained, Threatened for Opposing Military Action
The following appeared in the January 15 issue of University World News and has been highlighted in the weekly Academic Freedom Media Review published by Scholars at Risk, which tracks violations of academic freedom and civil liberties in colleges and universities around the world. While the AAUP does not generally take formal positions on violations…
“Academic Freedom” Out, “Innovation” In as Utah Trustees Approve New Mission Statement
On Tuesday, the University of Utah’s Board of Trustees voted to abandon a ten-year-old 120-word mission statement, branded too “long-winded” and lacking in tangible goals, replacing it with a new 70-word version that Academic Senate President Bill Johnson called “a nice, tight mission statement.” According to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune, the new…
The Right to Unionize
Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association which threatens to undermine the union movement in America by banning “fair share” or agency fees paid by workers for the services of a union in representing them. The AAUP, which is partly a union, has an obvious self-interest in fighting this…
H.A.W. Responds to A.H.A. Pro-Palestine Academic Freedom Resolution Defeat: New York Times Coverage
The New York Times covered the Historians Against the War resolution to protect academic freedom in Gaza and the West Bank that have been under Israeli control since the 1967 war. It stated in part: More than a half-dozen American scholarly groups have passed resolutions condemning Israel, including the American Anthropological Association, which endorsed a boycott…