BY DON NONINI, SHELDON POLLOCK, AND DAN SEGAL Over the past decade, faculty have most often encountered the problem of financial investments and the climate crisis when their students mobilized to divest their school’s endowments from fossil fuels. That mobilization, across some 1600 educational, religious, and other institutions world-wide, has been stunningly successful: to date,…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom, Michael Bérubé and I argue that academic freedom is not free speech (thus, the title) and that it operates with a different set of rules and expectations. We further argue that those rules need firming up: When universities respected…
BY KIRA T. LAWRENCE As a climate scientist, I’ve watched in disbelief as decades of denial and can-kicking have resulted in the leading edge of the climate crisis wreaking havoc across the world. For years, I have felt like I’ve been aboard the carbon train with the rest of humanity, telling passengers to brace for…
BY SANDRA STEINGRABER The following column by Sandra Steingraber, distinguished scholar in residence in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College, appeared in the March 3 edition of The Ithacan. For the past 18 years, I have served as our campus’ scholar in residence, recruited by a previous provost with a vision…
BY A UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN FLORIDA* In one of my final classes in May, students started talking about how well J. K. Rowling described moments like the one we’re living through now, when young people worry about the great evil that hangs over them, and the adults in charge refuse to come out of denial.…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement, “Don’t Teach, Strike! A Call to Educators Worldwide to Take Action for Climate Justice on September 20th,” was issued by nine U.S. faculty members, including AAUP Committee A member Michael Mann, and has since been endorsed by many more. To add your name to this call go to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH At a House committee hearing on “The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security,” Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was questioning former Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is regarded as an expert on climate change who helped to develop the Paris climate accord. He has criticized President Trump…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The photos of the devastating destruction caused by the fires that swept through Paradise, California, are shocking—particularly those of vehicles abandoned to the flames or, worse, caught up in the flames with people inside. I have found two of those images especially affecting—one of a school bus left at an angle…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The image is from Popular Science [https://www.popsci.com/science/]. The current home page features an article on the current fires, “California’s Forest Management Isn’t the Problem” [https://www.popsci.com/forest-management-california-fires]. Writing for the Washington Post, Susan Svrluga has reported on the controversy surrounding a shelter-in-place order at Pepperdine University: Pepperdine University’s 3,600 undergraduates were ordered…
ДBY HANK REICHMAN A new survey of 63,000 scientific experts across 16 federal agencies, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in cooperation with the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology at Iowa State University, shows that the Trump administration continues to “sideline science.” According to the survey, government scientists report iissues including “censorship…