BY HANK REICHMAN Later this month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, in which anti-union “right to work” forces are challenging the right of public employee unions to collect agency fees from non-members that the unions represent. These fees have since 1977 been protected by…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, January 19, the AAUP and the National Education Association (NEA) jointly filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31. In that case the ostensible plaintiff, Mark Janus, backed by the National Right to Work Committee and other anti-union groups, seeks…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is taken from the AAUP’s website: The AAUP submitted an amicus brief December 28 to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit urging the Court to uphold the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) determination that non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) are…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following news release has been issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists: As U.S. President Donald Trump announces his “Fake Media” awards, the Committee to Protect Journalists names its global Press Oppressors—world leaders who use rhetoric, legal action, and censorship to try to silence their critics. The list features leaders…
BY NANCY LONG In 2014, the AAUP joined a nationwide effort to obtain an exemption to the copyright laws that protect authors’ rights to fair use in the digital age. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) imposes criminal and civil liability on creators who circumvent technologies like encryption that protect copyrighted works. This poses a problem…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is from the November 22 edition of the Riverside Press-Enterprise: A U[niversity of] C[alifornia] Riverside student seen in a viral video grabbing a fellow student’s pro-Trump hat has been charged with misdemeanor grand theft. The charge against Edith Macias was filed Nov. 3, and a warrant for her arrest was granted…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP filed an amicus brief supporting a challenge to a statute and policy in Texas that compel faculty to permit concealed handguns in college classrooms. The brief in Glass v. Paxton, filed jointly with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for University World News, Brendan O’Malley reports that Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali is facing a death sentence in Iran after being convicted of spying for Israel. At the time of his arrest and detainment, Djalali was teaching disaster medicine at two European universities—the Karolinkska Institute in Sweden and the Vrije Universiteit…
BY JOHANN NEEM Johann N. Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. Recently, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General issued the findings of a long-awaited audit in which it concluded that Western Governors University (WGU) had defrauded the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the Associated Press, Ryan J. Foley has reported on a former University of Iowa wrestler who has been arrested on federal charges because he used keyloggers to gain access to faculty accounts and thereby get advance copies of exams and to change his own grades and those of some…