BY NIMISHA BARTON Following the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Department of Education in February 2025, colleges and universities rushed to shutter diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices in the hopes of avoiding the fate of so many other institutions—namely, incurring the wrath of the Trump administration that views such programs as…
BY MICHEL DEGRAFF Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the afternoon of Friday, January 30, 2026, then unpublished to provide time for AAUP staff to consult about its accordance with an editorial policy that states, “Posts should not focus primarily on specific ongoing disputes involving individuals and their colleges or universities or AAUP…
BY BILL MULLEN Can you identify yourself and explain what happened at Texas State? My name is Tom Alter. Until being recently fired in violation of my free speech rights, I was a tenured associate professor of history at Texas State University in San Marcos, specializing in labor and working class forms of organizing and…
BY MAX WEISS “I am anti-Israel, I am anti-Zionist also, but I am NOT anti-Jewish.” So said Palestinian intellectual Fayez A. Sayegh in 1956. I was reminded of this statement, a sentiment I personally share, on October 2, when members of the Princeton community received an email from Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE It’s not surprising that Charlie Kirk’s followers would laud him as a champion of free speech even while exploiting his death to stifle the speech of others who saw him as no kind of hero. This is, after all, what partisans are apt to do. The point isn’t to defend a principle—freedom…
BY AMY HAGOPIAN Public health professionals are charged with responding to humanitarian crises. When hospitals are bombed, when children are deliberately starved, when doctors are assassinated, we’re supposed to speak up. That’s the job. Last week, I was informed my American Public Health Association membership has been revoked, my annual meeting registration cancelled, and I…
BY HANK REICHMAN The image above is from an AI video that the GREAT (and demented) LEADER himself posted to social media. It reminded me of an historical analogy I’ve been mulling over since I first saw videos of masked ICE thugs rampaging through neighborhoods, courthouses, and downtown squares, chasing down immigrants (documented or not)…
BY WILLIAM MATTHEW MCCARTER For more than fifty years, I’ve been learning. For more than twenty years, I’ve been teaching. If at this stage I can’t profess something worth hearing, then I ought to quit and sell insurance. Students don’t pay for PowerPoints or rubrics. They pay for professors who profess. The word itself comes…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Most Americans are accustomed to authoritarianism by virtue of their daily experiences in the workplace. Managers make, interpret, and enforce the rules by which private companies operate; they say what goes, and they can use force to impose their will. Employees who resist can be disciplined or fired, often without due process…
By Matthew Boedy Most if not all Georgia institutions got a public records request last week from a shadowy media group linked to a politically conservative “government transparency” coalition. I have been able to confirm 13 schools got the request. Here is what the group requested: A complete list of course syllabi for all undergraduate…