BY JENNIFER RUTH “Will You Take the Stand?” ask the Florida college students staging a walkout at noon today. In an online pledge form, they write, The DeSantis Administration is proposing to outlaw all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives at Florida Colleges and Universities. He has displayed a pattern of behavior in which he Hijacks…
BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN When the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees chair David Boliek explained the trustees’ rationale for seeking to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership, he cited an imaginary problem in search of a blatantly political solution. On January 28, on the Fox and Friends news…
BY LOIS K. COX AND KATHERINE H. TACHAU The actuality of the Iowa legislative session makes the time a few months ago when we wrote “The Erosion of Support for Education and Tenure in Iowa” for the winter 2023 issue of Academe seem halcyon in contrast. Our fears for the future of public education in…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN A note from Academe Blog contributing editor Jennifer Ruth: This post is the second part of a two-part series on the DeSantis plan for higher education. It is required reading for all of us working to thwart the state-driven fascism (or what I have been calling “subnational authoritarianism”) that seeks to…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN A note from Academe Blog contributing editor Jennifer Ruth: This is the first part of a special two-part series by Timothy Kaufman-Osborn on the DeSantis plan for higher education. It is required reading for all of us working to thwart the state-driven fascism (or what I have been calling “subnational authoritarianism”)…
BY KEVIN HOWLEY Call me cynical, but any piece of legislation or policy prescription that receives bipartisan support these days gives me the willies. When Democrats and Republicans agree on anything, it usually involves bloated military budgets or, in the case of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, doubling down on roads and bridges in the…
BY PAUL DILLER COVID-19 vaccine mandates have been in effect at hundreds of universities for more than a year now. The 2022–2023 academic year is the second consecutive year during which many universities require some amount of COVID-19 vaccination from students, faculty, and staff. As the Centers for Disease Control’s recent guide to COVID-19 prevention…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The education gag orders sweeping red states are being challenged in the courts on First Amendment grounds. This makes sense and we must hope that all such challenges prove effective. The reality, though, is that the anti-CRT and “divisive concepts” legislation directly attacks academic freedom. As AAUP President Irene Mulvey recently tweeted…
BY HANK REICHMAN At the AAUP’s biennial meeting last month I had occasion to pick up a copy of Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats, and the Future of Higher Education, by UC Berkeley education professor John Aubrey Douglass and a group of other contributors. The book is a collection of essays treating the impact on…
BY WISCONSIN CONFERENCE OF THE AAUP On Monday, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Jennifer Mnookin as the next chancellor of UW–Madison. Within hours, many leading Wisconsin Republicans—both elected officials and candidates for statewide office—issued nearly identical statements of opposition to her appointment. We write to condemn these statements…