Academics for Black Survival and Wellness Week

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH A week-long series of events from Juneteenth, Friday, June 19, to Thursday, June 25, 2020    A weeklong personal and professional development initiative for academics to honor the toll of racial trauma on Black people, resist anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and facilitate accountability and collective action. Registration is encouraged. Academics for Black…

United against Hate

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On behalf of PEN America and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, we invite you to join us on May 27 for a day of action to condemn this scourge; celebrate Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander writers; and to raise your voice to call out hate in all its heinous forms.…

Student asleep behind a pile of books.

College Affordability and the Needs of Working Students

BY LAURA W. PERNA According to a January 2020 Gallup poll, only 27 percent of adults in the United States believe that college is affordable. Democratic presidential candidates have responded to these concerns with proposals for free tuition at community colleges, student loan debt-forgiveness, and more. Some proposals, like increasing the amount of money that…

A Better Way to Remember the Titans

BY STEVEN LUBET It was inevitable that the film “Remember the Titans” would be mentioned in the headlines of Herman Boone’s obituaries. He was the real-life African American football coach of a real-life integrated high school team in Alexandria, Virginia, that won the real-life 1971 state championship, and he passed away last month at age…

Listening As the Key to Diversity

BY AARON BARLOW Students are treated differently dependent on race and class and disability and sex. That’s a truism, something educators have known for at least half a century. But it’s also a truism we’ve still failed to address effectively. Why? In part because of the way students treat us but mostly because we don’t…

five rows of clear gummy bears surrounding a single red gummy bear

Diverse Faculty and Fear of Speech

BY JOHN STREAMAS After writing my Journal of Academic Freedom article, “A Vision for Scholar-Activists of Color,” I learned that my university has launched a new campaign to “recruit and retain” a diverse faculty, and now I serve on a subcommittee. At the same time it is also redefining standards for school-wide curricular requirements, and…

base of a monument with spray-painted graffiti "white privilege"

The Coddling of the American White Male

BY JOHN F. COVALESKIE In “Speech, Academic Freedom, and Privilege,” in the current issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom, I argue that “colleges and universities should actively place themselves on the side of victims of systems of oppression.” Over the last couple of generations, a movement has developed to make college campuses more welcoming…