BY AARON BARLOW According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Republican state legislators in Wisconsin “are threatening to pull any hope of more state funding unless a new course at UW-Madison called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ is canceled.” This, from a movement that claims to want more freedom and less law. One legislator wants to go a step further, scouring “other…
BY AARON BARLOW The first ‘bigly’ Twitter and academic freedom case was that of Associate Professor Steven Salaita just two-and-a-half years ago (there were others earlier, including that in 2013 of Professor David Guth that resulted in a policy instituted by the Kansas Board of Regents that “faculty members and other employees can be fired…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Jacqueline Stevens and her attorney Rima Kapitan had contacted Illinois Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure concerning violations of AAUP standards at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Academe blog covered elements of her case, and this is an update of the Association’s engagement in the matter. Professor Stevens was forced to undergo…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Over the past few years this blog has posted a number of items related to the work of the conservative North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. In March, 2015, John Wilson reported that the center had praised the decision of the University of North Carolina Board of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Most Americans know California’s Napa Valley as a tourist destination and the source of many of the country’s finest wines. But people live there too, of course, and many of them go to school. Specifically, many attend Napa Valley College, the local community college. Last week Doug Ernst, the public information…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Some politicians make good college presidents, at least on paper. As Rick Seltzer reported in Inside Higher Education last week , the best possess many of the same skills as successful college and university presidents. They are typically well connected with outside stakeholders, enjoy good name recognition, and know how to…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE Below is the October 10, 2016 letter to the Kennesaw State Board of Regents from the AAUP: Members of the faculty at Kennesaw State University have urged the American Association of University Presidents to take an official interest in the issues of academic governance raised by the recommendation of the board of regents’ Executive and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted excerpts from an op-ed piece about the search for a new UC Berkeley Chancellor published in the Daily Californian, the campus newspaper, by leaders of the Berkeley Faculty Association. They endorsed the Statement of Principles enunciated earlier in the week by the Council of University of California…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted to this blog “A Statement of Principles for Choosing New University of California Chancellors,” issued by the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), an AAUP partner organization. Yesterday, at UC Berkeley, where more than a dozen students, faculty, staff, alumni and foundation representatives serving on the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The recent resignations of University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi have focused concern among UC faculty members about the criteria and procedures for selecting campus leaders. Yesterday the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), a partner organization of the AAUP representing…