BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the following statement signed by fifteen professors from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton universities appeared on the website of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton: We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who…
BY HANK REICHMAN Most members of the AAUP, myself included, identify politically on the left side of the political spectrum, as do a majority of American faculty members, especially in the humanities and social sciences. But the AAUP’s mission is to “advance academic freedom and shared governance” for all faculty members, regardless of their political…
BY AARON BARLOW In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following News Brief has been distributed by Education Dive: A professor at Youngstown State University has decided against teaching an optional summer class for students because the institution decided to cut his pay for the class by 43% after fewer students enrolled than the required 15, according to WKBN…
By JOERG TIEDE The following petition is being circulated by the AAUP. Sign to stand against threats and harassment. We are dismayed that another faculty member, Johnny Eric Williams of Trinity College, has become the target of a flood of threats following reports about his social media postings by the right-wing media outlet Campus Reform. In…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL The range and scope of academic programs in higher education has become increasingly complex. New programs emerge almost daily to adjust to consumer demands and workforce needs. Applicants can easily become confused as they attempt to judge quality, complexity, cost, and a return on investment. The result is often a mishmash…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL A hotly debated topic making the rounds in higher education now is whether American colleges and universities – public and private – face a round of mergers and acquisitions over the next several years. There are a number of reasons that the discussion of this topic had gained momentum. Tuition discount…
BY HANK REICHMAN My twitter feed was humming this morning with reaction to an article published in Skeptic Magazine, by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay. They managed to submit a hoax article — “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” — to a journal they purported to be about gender studies and quickly celebrated this achievement…