BY JACK C. LANE Rollins College’s embrace of AAUP principles and subsequent removal from the AAUP’s list of censured institutions in 1939 brought an end to a crisis at the college that had begun in 1933 with the dismissal of Professor John Rice and eleven other faculty members, an episode discussed in my article for…
BY ROBERT A. SCOTT Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic this past spring prompted the rapid turn to remote teaching and learning; caused uncertainty about whether teaching and learning would continue in the remote mode this fall; resulted in dire enrollment forecasts for domestic and international students; and raised questions about what plans should be made…
BY WAVY THE BEAR Hi! I’m Wavy the Bear, senior stuffed brand ambassador at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn! The nice folks at the AAUP liked the story about “managerial techniques” and “academic freedom” that I sent them for their journal, so now I’m “blogging”! Can I get a “wow”?!? I wrote that story back…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 11 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. The journal features scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. This year’s volume considers the opposing visions of the governed campus and the “managed campus.” As the…
BY ELYSE CRYSTALL In my circle of family and friends in Brooklyn, the word chutzpah could indicate admiration for someone who asserted herself, spoke truth to power in spite of what others thought: “She had the chutzpah to challenge the senator’s policy on Medicaid expansion.” More often, however, chutzpah expressed disgust at a person who…
BY GREGORY SCHOLTZ The American Association of University Professors has authorized an investigation of the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on seven institutions: Canisius College (NY), Illinois Wesleyan University, Keuka College (NY), Marian University(WI), Medaille College (NY), National University (CA), and Wittenberg University…
BY HANK REICHMAN Responding earlier this month on this blog to an article by Professor Stephen Gavazzi, I noted the growing tendency of governing boards — and, in the public sector, legislatures and the governors who usually appoint those boards — “to tilt the scales against the faculty and, arguably, against the common interest of…
BY HANK REICHMAN Early today the following tweet from Professor Stephen Gavazzi, who teaches in the education school at Ohio State, came up on my Twitter timeline: A bit flattered to be asked my opinion, I quickly read the essay and concluded that given the restrictions of the Twitter format any response on that medium…
BY ALARMED FACULTY MEMBERS AT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY This spring and summer of COVID has witnessed a perhaps unprecedented assault on faculty rights, as institution after institution, claiming some sort of exigency, have laid off both contingent and tenured faculty members, restructured programs, and short-circuited established institutions of shared governance. In many cases the challenges are…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The document below, “Recommendations for UC Policing,” was approved by the Academic Council of the University of California (UC) system on June 24 and forwarded by Academic Council Chair Kum-Kum Bhavnani to UC President Janet Napolitano on June 29. In the UC system each of the ten campuses, known as divisions,…