POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a post yesterday, Hank Reichman noted that August 1 was the 50th anniversary of the mass murder committed by Charles Whitman on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Whitman had barricaded himself on top of the tower that was the tallest structure on the campus and began…
BY HANK REICHMAN I am old enough to remember August 1, 1966 — fifty years ago today — when a mentally disturbed ex-marine, Charles Whitman, climbed to the top of the tower at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) with an arsenal of high-powered weapons and began shooting. For 96 terrifying minutes, Whitman fired…
BY HANK REICHMAN On June 4, following Committee A’s annual spring meeting, present and former AAUP leaders, activists, and staff members gathered in Washington to join family members and friends in honoring the memory of Jordan E. Kurland, who passed away in January at the age of 87, still actively employed by the AAUP. Jordan…
BY MARTIN KICH On March 30, Shirley Hufstedler, the nation’s first Secretary of Education, died at age 90. Before and after her public service as a member of President Carter’s cabinet, Hufstedler had a very distinguished career as an attorney and as a judge. Her many accomplishments are highlighted in the New York Times obituary,…
In 1927, Professor Louis R. Gottschalk resigned his position at the University of Louisville to protest the dismissal of his colleague Rolf Johannesen. Simultaneously with his resignation, Gottschalk wrote to the AAUP to request an investigation of Johannesen’s dismissal. The newly-installed president, George Colvin, justified the dismissal by citing Johannesen’s reluctance to sign the one-year…
BY HANK REICHMAN Agents of Change, the documentary film about the student movements for ethnic studies at Cornell and San Francisco State Universities in the late ’60s and early ’70s, had its world premiere last week at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. A rough cut of the film was previously screened to…
Yesterday, Joerg Tiede posted an excerpt from his new book about the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles. Tiede noted that although the Declaration was presented on December 31, 1915, the AAUP members did not vote to approve it until January 1, 1916. So on this, the centennial of the of the slightly misdated Declaration, it’s…
The AAUP was founded on January 1 and 2, 1915. Shortly after the founding meeting, the Association’s first president, Columbia University philosophy professor John Dewey, appointed a Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, referred to as “the committee of fifteen.” The committee took up investigations of violations of academic freedom at the universities of Utah,…
Over the three years of my involvement with the AAUP, I’ve watched this venerable faculty institution complete a reorganization and begin a process of revitalization that is already placing it at the forefront of faculty advocacy, reaching far beyond what had been envisioned for it less than a generation ago. As a defender of academic…