BY JENNIFER RUTH “One looks in vain for mainstream reporting to call this what it is,” Columbia law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw told the audience at the National Teach-In held on October 14th in honor of George Floyd’s birthday. The fanatical distortions of critical race theory by partisan politicians, the alleged “woke” orthodoxy stifling free speech…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday’s launch of a new “university,” the so-called University of Austin (or UATX; their own acronym, which looks more like a listing on the stock exchange), garnered widespread ridicule on academic social media. University of Rhode Island historian Erik Loomis no doubt spoke for many when he tweeted, “Honestly, making fun of…
BY PEN AMERICA A wave of alarming legislative efforts to limit teaching and learning on topics including racism, sexism, and American history represent a censorious drive to impose viewpoint and content-based restrictions on freedom of speech and thought in American schools and universities, PEN America said in a report released today. In the report, Educational…
BY HANK REICHMAN The state of Florida has gotten something of a reputation for zaniness. The “Florida Man” meme has been the source of both laughter and horror, as tales of outlandish behavior in the news repeatedly go viral. To read some of the most outrageous (and entertaining), go here. But these days “Florida Man”…
BY HANK REICHMAN Charles G. Sellers, an historian of the early 19th-century U.S. and longtime member of the University of California at Berkeley Department of History died last week at the age of 98. As a scholar Sellers was best known for his book, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, published in 1991, which, according…
BY MARY ELLEN FLANNERY The following is reposted with permission from NEA Today. Mary Ellen Flannery is senior writer at the National Education Association. Fifty years ago, a Florida state legislative committee sought to identify, interrogate, and purge gay schoolteachers and university faculty. With subpoena powers and a network of informants, state legislators used uniformed…
BY HANK REICHMAN The headline on Inside Higher Ed was provocative, if not downright inflammatory: “AAUP vs. FIRE.” But rather than the knockdown drag-out contest between two national organizations celebrated for their defense of intellectual freedom implied by the headline, the article that followed offered something much more modest. The AAUP chapter at the University…
BY KELLI PYRON ALVAREZ In June, a colleague who did not attend my University of Oklahoma workshop “Anti-Racist Rhetoric & Pedagogies” decided to download the video and send it to off-campus parties. I cannot speak to his intent, but the result was that several organizations, including FIRE, misinterpreted and misconstrued the goal and purpose of…
BY MICHAEL GIVEL At many universities across the United States, a modern addition to central administrations has been some type of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program or office. At the University of Oklahoma (OU), where I am a professor of political science, our DEI program is known as the Office of Diversity, Equity,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I interviewed Jonathan Rauch, the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Institution Press, June 2021) via email about his new book. Here are some upcoming online events with Jonathan Rauch about The Constitution of Knowledge: FIRE Faculty Network, June 8, 4pm ET Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 9,…