BY TABBYE CHAVOUS Ed. note: This week the New York Times Magazine published an article, “The University of Michigan Doubled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?,” by investigative reporter Nicholas Confessore. To many in the U-M community, including some with serious criticisms of some DEI initiatives, the article was plagued by misinformation and bias. The…
On April 17, higher ed unions, AAUP chapters, and student organizations across the U.S. are coming together for a national day of action to fight back against the coordinated assault on teaching and learning, and to mobilize for a system of higher education that serves the public good. Our aim is not just to beat…
BY MARK S. JAMES Last August, my colleague wrote about how our university’s leadership has embraced a top-down corporate model as the way of running the university, and he proceeded to describe various instances when they have ignored shared governance and threatened academic freedom. This trend has continued unabated. The most recent example of this…
BY JAMIE GONZALES The impending closure of the UH LGBTQ Resource Center caused by the passing of Senate Bill 17 weighs heavy on my heart. For those unfamiliar with SB 17, it states that “the governing board of an institution of higher education shall ensure that each unit of the institution: (1) does not, except…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a DEI committee? At the University of Texas–Austin, Professor Kathleen McElroy served on the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity. She also wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, entitled “The Importance of Faculty Diversity Is…
BY NORRIS M. HAYNES The US Supreme Court has recently ruled that colleges and universities can no longer use race as a factor in college admissions. This ruling was the result of a specific challenge to admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In their complaint, the plaintiffs, an organization called…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH In a letter to the editor, AAUP president Irene Mulvey responded to a series of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which AAUP statements were invoked to argue for the primacy of either academic freedom or diversity, equity, and inclusion. This framing pits the two against one another, as…
BY CHAVELLA T. PITTMAN Imagine a world where our campuses are… …incubators that birth a bounty of intellectual ideas that are fully pursued, investigated, taught, and disseminated. …celebrated because academic freedom is not only protected, but how it is protected has become an example to other endeavors. …reflections of a full range of ideas pursued…
BY JENNIFER RUTH I don’t think I need to rehearse the incident and its very unjust consequences for one adjunct professor. It’s all over the news, both in higher ed and mainstream outlets. “Our response to the classroom event does not disregard or minimize the importance of academic freedom,” said Hamline University president Fayneese Miller…