POSTED BY KELLY HAND September–October 2018 | Vol. 104, No. 5 This issue of Academe explores the theme of “otherness” in our college and university communities from a variety of perspectives. Articles discuss topics such as fighting back against the marginalization of faculty, pursuing an academic career after serving time in prison, being a woman…
BY RISA LIEBERWITZ AND AARON NISENSON The AAUP joined with the American Council on Education and thirty-five other higher education associations in filing an amicus brief in federal court this week opposing a challenge to race-based admissions at Harvard University. We argue that “a diverse student body is essential to educational objectives of colleges and universities,…
BY AARON BARLOW Fortunately for me, I teach on a campus where diversity is the norm. New York City College of Technology (one of the campuses of the City University of New York) is 33% Hispanic, 30% Black (non-Hispanic), 20% Asian and 11% White (non-Hispanic). The reversal of Obama-era Affirmative Action guidelines, clearly, is not…
BY MISSY WATSON I’m a teacher and user of standardized English who strives to deconstruct and contest standardized English. My classes regularly feature essays, textbooks, and research studies that reveal the oppressive and discriminatory results of assuming, consciously or not, that standardized English is superior to all other language varieties. Last year, I happened to…
BY CHELSEA FOWLER When Frances McDormand delivered her 2018 Oscars acceptance speech, she left the audience with two final words, “inclusion rider,” which sparked a flurry of Google searches across the US. Inclusion rider is a relatively new term coined by Dr. Stacy L. Smith at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. These…
BY ELIZABETH J. MEYER The topic of free speech on college campuses has been an important one and one that continues to be debated particularly in the wake of Milo Yiannopolis’s speaking tour last year and the 2016 presidential election. With groups like Turning Point USA pouring significant resources into sponsoring conservative speakers like Ann…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Agents of Change, the documentary film about the late 1960s student rebellions at San Francisco State and Cornell Universities, which led to the establishment of Black Studies programs at both schools, is now available for streaming. The film was shown to enthusiastic audiences at the AAUP’s 2015 and 2016 Summer Institutes. …
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH “Let’s not judge the president on what he says.” New GOP Senate Candidate Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) In case you are wondering whether the context might somehow make the comment less dubious, here is an excerpt from an article written by Darrel Rowland and Jessica Wehrman for the Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Rep.…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is an item by Jeva Lange for The Week: President Trump’s alleged word choice when referring to African nations during an immigration meeting on Thursday has sparked bipartisan and international condemnation. The latest scathing rebuke, though, has come from … the dictionary. It is surely no coincidence that Merriam-Webster’s word of the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Kansas Legislator Tries to Reframe Racist Comments as an Expression of Racial Empathy This is from the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet: A Republican Kansas legislator apologized late Monday night for employing openly racist logic to explain why he believes marijuana should remain illegal. “Marijuana is an entry drug into the higher…