BY IRENE MULVEY At this time, when our nation is confronting deep-rooted racial inequity and having honest and long-overdue conversations about our history, legislators in a number of states have moved to shut down the conversation by restricting teaching about oppression, race, and gender. The details vary, but generally the bills prohibit teaching or training…
BY HANK REICHMAN Apparently it was all a hoax. Two months ago Boise State University suspended 52 class sections of a required general education class with some 1300 students in what John Wilson on this blog called “one of the largest attacks on academic freedom in American history.” The move came in response to an…
BY JOHN K. WILSON North Dakota has approved a new law to banish abortion rights advocates from public colleges in an extraordinary assault on academic freedom that violates the First Amendment. On May 7, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum made a line-item veto of SB 2030. Gov. Burgum did make a partial veto of the…
BY GINA TIGRI Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? This question was famously asked numerous times in the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) amid the anti-Communist frenzy known as the Red Scare in the McCarthy era. A new higher education bill was recently…
BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today. In an ostensible effort to protect “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on public college and university campuses, the Florida legislature has approved legislation that, like similar proposals this year in Iowa and elsewhere, amounts to what the AAUP has repeatedly described as a “solution in…
BY IRENE MULVEY In a December 7 virtual listening session on higher education with the Biden-Harris transition team and other higher ed advocacy organizations, AAUP president Irene Mulvey delivered remarks about planning for a better future for higher education; supporting students, faculty, and staff; and repealing Trump administration policies. Thank you for inviting the AAUP…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I have an essay posted today at the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) blog about a particularly disturbing case at Kent State University where state legislators are explicitly threatening millions of dollars in state funding unless the university bans a textbook that offended the Republican politicians. Here are…
BY IRENE MULVEY AAUP president Irene Mulvey issued the following statement on September 29. I write to you today, as voter registration deadlines fast approach, with an urgent call to action. These are extraordinary times and much is at stake. Since its founding in 1915, the AAUP has never endorsed a candidate for office or…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The CARES Act, or the third federal stimulus bill in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, includes funding for post-secondary educational institutions (vocational schools, community and technical colleges, and other colleges and universities. Click here for the preliminary estimates of those allocations. The document is 165 pages long, and it is organized…
BY JOHN K. WILSON This week, Arizona HB 2238 passed the state house education committee by a vote of 7-4. Stanley Kurtz (the mastermind behind these laws with the help of the Goldwater Institute) calls the Arizona bill the start of a “third wave” of legislation in the name of campus free speech, following earlier…