BY JOHN K. WILSON I have not previously spoken out in defense of Melissa Click, the University of Missouri professor who was loudly denounced for supporting a student protest by keeping out student journalists. Like many others, I strongly opposed her actions, and despite many threats against her and calls for her dismissal, she was…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this week, Robert Quinn, the executive director of Scholars at Risk, an international network of higher education institutions in 39 countries with headquarters at New York University, published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled “The War on Education.” The attack last week at Pakistan’s Bacha Khan University that killed 22 and…
BY KELLY HAND In his article “Steven Salaita, the Media, and the Struggle for Academic Freedom” in the January-February 2016 issue of Academe, Peter N. Kirstein writes about media coverage of the controversy surrounding Steven Salaita’s dismissal by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The issue’s special focus on media and the faculty was inspired…
BY HENRY REICHMAN In an important piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week, “Watch What You Say: How Fear is Stifling Academic Freedom,” Fredrik deBoer, who teaches at Purdue University, made the essential connection between violations of academic freedom and the academic labor market. Seeking to explain “the pervasive sense of fear that…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Teresa Buchanan, the Louisiana State University (LSU) education professor terminated over strong objections from a faculty review committee and the Faculty Senate, last week filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against the president of LSU and other top administrators for violating her free speech and due process rights by firing her last…
BY HENRY REICHMAN The Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) awards fellowships to academics who are facing threats in their home countries. These fellowships support visiting academic appointments at institutions of higher learning outside the fellows’ home countries, where they may continue their teaching and/or research in safety. The program’s emphasis is on…
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…
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…
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…