POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Below is the May 10 “Statement of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Penn Administration’s Decision to Arrest Students and Faculty and the University’s Imposition of Mandatory Leaves of Absence on Six Students.” We condemn in the strongest possible terms the decision of the Penn administration to call in riot police…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE We are now seeing how holocausts happen. We are seeing how people who dare to speak out against massive state violence—in this case, college students protesting Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza—are being beaten and arrested at the behest of university leaders, who in turn are acting as agents of the Israel-allied US…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Yesterday, Columbia threatened student protesters, “if you do not leave by 2 p.m., you will be suspended pending further investigation.” This interim suspension included banishment from campus, a prohibition on attending classes, and eviction from campus housing. All organizations committed to campus free expression should call for a total ban on…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH On April 23, 2024, the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee issued the following statement. We condemn in the strongest terms the wave of recent repression of students and faculty engaged in peaceful and principled protest by university administrations across the country. These include the draconian treatment of students by the administrations of Barnard…
BY HANK REICHMAN As a Columbia alum (College ’69), participant in that university’s 1968 student rebellion, advocate for academic freedom and free expression rights, and as a Jew, I have followed developments at Columbia over the past few days with great interest. On Wednesday came the appearance by the co-chairs of the university’s Board of…
BY THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The following statement was issued January 29, 2024. In 2022, American University reaffirmed its commitment to freedom of expression, stating in relevant part: When we engage in inquiry, we may have to confront truths that are unpleasant and ideas and perspectives with which we disagree or even find loathsome. When we…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On January 19, 2024, PEN America held a major summit on free expression at Harvard University. But it seems top administrators at Harvard are the ones who really need a lesson on the topic, since that same day they announced a new “Guidance on Protest and Dissent” that restricts the right…
BY CORY JAMES YOUNG I was having a conversation with a graduate student in my department about a possible collaboration when we noticed the television. One of our colleagues was on the Iowa City news providing historical context about the ongoing crisis in Palestine and Israel. Then, even more unexpectedly, a student from my previous…
BY HANK REICHMAN The so-called “heckler’s veto” is much in the higher ed news these days, with Inside Higher Ed this week running a piece, “Shouting Down Speakers Who Offend,” focusing on incidents at SUNY Albany, Stanford, and San Francisco State Universities. The Stanford incident has prompted two prior posts to this blog (here and here).…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN This blog has regularly posted items in support of faculty and students resisting attacks on academic freedom at universities in Turkey (see, for examples, here, here, and here; see also from Academe magazine, Fall 2019, here). Now Turkish universities are facing another crisis: the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that hit…