BY JOHN K. WILSON This afternoon (Thurs. April 19 at 1:30pm ET), AAUP political organizer Monica Owens will be holding a Facebook Live event about the threat from legislating free speech. It’s an important time to address these issues, especially since South Carolina has become the first state to pass the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Several days ago, Sasha Ingber contributed an article to the Washington Post on how “Trump’s Presidency Has Prompted a New, Nationwide College Course on Why Democracies Collapse.” The course has been developed by Robert Balir, an assistant professor of political science at Brown University. A specialist in post-conflict security in Africa,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following is from a news story in the Arizona Republic: A bill to fundamentally restructure how Arizona’s three state universities are managed passed an Arizona Senate committee Monday as a fast-tracked proposal that won’t receive much public input. Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, wants to effectively dismantle the Arizona Board…
BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members in other states may be excused for expressing some jealousy of California’s economic and political success since Jerry Brown was elected governor nearly eight years ago. While Republican-led states like Kansas, Iowa, or Wisconsin continue to suffer slow growth and calamitous budget shortfalls and cuts, under Brown and a Democratic…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Two Items from Ohio This is a summary of the findings in a report by Policy Matters Ohio on student debt in in the state: –Ohioans have higher rates of indebtedness and default than residents of other states. –People of color, women, low-income people and seniors struggle most with debt. Loan…
BY HANK REICHMAN Leaders of the City University of New York Professional Staff Congress, a joint affiliate of the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers, and the Rutgers University AAUP-AFT were among fifteen people arrested yesterday at a demonstration in New York protesting the Wall Street funders of the Republican Tax Bill, approved later…
BY HANK REICHMAN Tennessee, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have already enacted comprehensive new campus speech laws based on model legislation proposed by the Goldwater Institute, which in critical respects defend free speech by attacking it. (I discussed this legislation previously in a section of one of my lengthy posts on outside speakers, under the subtitle…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The AAUP has joined with 36 other higher education organizations in urging Congress to slow down its reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to allow the consequences of its provisions to be understood and revised as necessary. After several years of inaction, the bill is suddenly being rushed through committee with…
BY WENDY BROWN Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the Berkeley Faculty Association. The following is the text of her speech today at the NO to the Grad Tax walkout rally in Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. It is hard to…