BY JONATHAN GRAUBART The horrifying violence in the Hamas-Israel war has aroused great passions across the United States. Both Hamas and Israel have plenty of blood on their hands. What concerns me here is the restricted space for discussion. Almost all politicians restrict their condemnations to Hamas and have little tolerance for those who address…
BY JENNIFER RUTH On the August 3 episode of the Progress Texas podcast, guests discussed the recent incidents of political interference at Texas A&M University. One situation involved trustee interference in the hiring of distinguished professor of journalism Kathleen McElroy and the subsequent resignation of President Katherine Banks and the other involved the suspension and…
BY MIKE BUDD “Don’t mourn—organize!” Joe Hill, union organizer, executed 1915 There’s a lot to mourn in Florida (and elsewhere) right now, not only but especially in our colleges and universities. According to an AAUP preliminary report in May 2023, academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a…
BY YOVANNA PINEDA With a supermajority in the state legislature, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has passed his dream legislation, which seeks to punish those who think differently from him as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male with zero tolerance for the state’s diverse citizens, including African Americans, transgender and LGBTQ+ communities, and immigrants from nearly two…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a DEI committee? At the University of Texas–Austin, Professor Kathleen McElroy served on the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity. She also wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, entitled “The Importance of Faculty Diversity Is…
BY HANK REICHMAN The recently released preliminary report of the AAUP’s special committee to review an apparent pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida, which I am co-chairing, concludes that “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically…
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…