BY JOHN K. WILSON The tenured appointment of Nikole Hannah-Jones was approved by the University of North Carolina trustees a few minutes ago. This is a victory for academic freedom and for shared governance. The academic freedom victory is about the importance of tenure to academic freedom. Some people argued that Hannah-Jones didn’t need tenure,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Greg Lukianoff, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and three co-authors have written a piece, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” discussing the avalanche of proposed and, in some cases, already enacted legislation governing classroom instruction in both higher ed and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP, joined by more than 90 other groups, issued a powerful “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” And, of course, it’s not only legislation. The continuing controversy over the failure of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees to approve a…
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 HASSAN MELEHY By now, the decision by the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to refuse a tenured professorship to Nikole Hannah-Jones is a well-known story. One trustee, speaking anonymously, made clear that the motive was “politics.” In North Carolina we’re familiar with the right-wing policymaking that governs us: one of its major sources is…
BY UNC HUSSMAN FACULTY As Hussman School of Journalism and Media faculty, we are stunned at the failure to award tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” winner and UNC-Chapel Hill 2019 Distinguished Alumna recently inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. This was reported…
BY THE CAMPUS POLICE WORKING GROUP The following is an excerpt, with source citations removed, from the recently released report On Campus Police Forces; see also the excerpt “The Growth and Development of Campus Police.” In July 2020, the AAUP appointed a Campus Police Working Group and charged its members with drafting a report on…
BY NADINE STROSSEN The following is a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger from Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School, Past National President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship. Dear Lee,…
BY THE CAMPUS POLICE WORKING GROUP The following is an excerpt, with source citations removed, from the recently released report On Campus Police Forces. In July 2020, the AAUP appointed a Campus Police Working Group and charged its members with drafting a report on the role of police on campus, the appropriateness of higher education…
BY GREGORY E. RUTLEDGE The current state of the union—recurring mass shootings, raging white supremacy (manifested in voter disenfranchisement, anti-immigrant hostility, violence against Asian Americans, and efforts to foment a racial civil war), a pandemic, outrageously foxy lying by US senators and representatives, and increasing economic desperation alongside massive wealth gains by billionaires—and the complacency…