POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for IndyWeek, which serves the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, Erica Hellerstein reports: After months of contentious back-and-forth, the UNC Board of Governors voted this morning [Friday, September 8] to ban the UNC Center for Civil Rights from doing legal work on behalf of the state’s poor and minority…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In response to President Donald Trump’s decision to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) president Rudy Fichtenbaum issued the following statement. The American Association of University Professors denounces in the strongest possible terms the decision by the Trump administration to end…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH All language is an inexact effort to reference and communicate aspects of reality, and ultimately, even the most seemingly straightforward statement can be shown to have ambiguous possibilities. That said, human society depends on language to function, and as this account of a judicial ruling makes clear, making unusual efforts to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Resolution 2017-9. On the Proposal to Bar UNC Centers and Institutes from Engaging in Legal Actions The Faculty Executive Committee resolves: We respectfully urge members of the UNC Board of Governors to vote “no” on the proposed change to Section 400.7 of the UNC Policy Manual entitled “Involvement of Centers and…
BY HANK REICHMAN On July 1, Georgia’s new “campus carry” law went into effect. The law, similar to legislation recently enacted in other states,most notably Texas, allows weapons permit holders to carry firearms on campus except at a sporting venue or in a student dormitory. On July 25, a Kennesaw State University student was robbed…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Under the heading “Trump’s Fraud Commission Has Big Problems,” Vox has offered the following summaries of those problems, with links to articles providing more detail: During and after the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump released a relentless stream of allegations of widespread voter fraud across the country, with no evidence to…
BY HANK REICHMAN Responding to the Trump administration’s decision to replace the National Commission on Forensic Science with an in-house law enforcement task force and a yet-unnamed adviser, four prominent associations of scientists, led by the 120,000-member American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), on June 9 called on the Justice Department to reverse…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH I have read about several faculty members who are using the Trump presidency as the topic for courses in various disciplines. When I was younger, I would have been tempted to try to develop a composition course around the topic, but with age, I have become somewhat less recklessly masochistic.…
BY HANK REICHMAN In two free speech decisions with minimal direct relevance to higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled, first, that the federal government cannot refuse to register trademarks that the government deems offensive on racial, religious or similar ground and, second, that a North Carolina law making it a felony for a…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier today I was privileged to participate in a stimulating discussion of free speech on campuses on the radio call-in show “Your Call” on KALW-FM in San Francisco. Participating in the call were moderator Renee Kemp; Samantha Harris, director of policy research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE);…