BY HANK REICHMAN Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Wang, arrested by Iranian authorities for alleged espionage, has now been in prison for over 900 days (see previous posts on this case here and here). February 20 will be a “day of action” in support of the imprisoned scholar, which will include a “call-a-thon” and rally…
BY HANK REICHMAN In December I posted “Another Assault on Scholarship in Hungary,” reporting that László Lovász, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences had informed an emergency assembly of the Academy about a move by the government to drastically cut the institution’s funding. As I reported, “Innovation Minister László Palkovics had explained why he…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week the New York Times reported that the University Senate at American University in Cairo (AUC) had on February 5 “voted overwhelmingly” to declare no confidence in the university’s president, Francis Ricciardone, a former United States ambassador to Egypt, Turkey and the Philippines and Palau. In the resolution, the Times reported,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Earlier today, a Turkish court sentenced an academic, Yonca Demir from Bilgi University, to three years in prison for the crime of signing a peace petition critical of the government. It marked the longest sentence yet given to the 1128 professors who signed a 2016 petition by Academics for Peace that angered…
BY HANK REICHMAN In an opinion piece posted today on The Hill, Varsha Koduvayur, a senior research analyst specializing in Gulf States issues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute, argues that the Matthew Hedges affair “should be a wake-up call for universities.” Hedges is a British researcher who last…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a statement released yesterday by the Canadian Association of University Teachers. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is giving a failing grade to a free speech policy developed by Ontario’s colleges without any consultation with faculty. “The colleges’ so-called free speech statement is a classic…
BY HANK REICHMAN Amidst all the bashing of professors as left-wing ideological thugs (but also sensitive “snowflakes”) who seek only to indoctrinate vulnerable students, the reality that the great majority of faculty members go out of their way to advise, mentor, and assist their students, regardless of politics or personal characteristics, frequently without remuneration for…
BY LLUIS DE YZAGUIRRE I MAURA In the last few weeks, academics from all over the world have expressed their deep concern about the decision by the Spanish judiciary to prosecute two political science scholars and two law scholars based at three different universities in Barcelona. To draw attention to this fact they have published…
BY HANK REICHMAN On December 1, Central European University (CEU) announced that, after a lengthy struggle, it would abandon its Budapest campus and relocate to Vienna. “Basically this is a dark day for freedom in Hungary,” said Michael Ignatieff, the president and rector of CEU. “And it’s a dark day for academic freedom.” CEU said…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT For previous posts on this topic go here, here, here, and here. On Tuesday, Nov 27, I joined a group of protestors outside the Parliament, on Kossuth Square in Budapest. There, a coalition of students denouncing “attacks on academic freedom” had convened a week-long Open University (Szabad Egyetem). The protest was…