BY HANK REICHMAN Calbright College, California’s totally online community college, a target of withering faculty criticism from its inception by former Gov. Jerry Brown, may be just a few steps from a well-deserved demise. Last week the California Legislature agreed on a state budget for 2020-21 that will eliminate all funding for the school. The…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued June 5 by the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA). The Labor and Working-Class History Association condemns the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and all victims of racist police brutality, and we demand justice. We stand in solidarity with all who are…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued on June 3 by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) stands in solidarity with communities around the world protesting racism, injustice, and inequality. While the ongoing demonstrations have been triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis…
BY MARK S. JAMES This blog post originally appeared on the Molloy College AAUP chapter website. We are reposting it here with the author’s permission. Dear Colleagues, I am a black man in America. I grew up in a white family that didn’t want to talk about race. Yet race was everywhere. The dangers of…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Gene Smith is a Senior Vice President and Wolfe Foundation Endowed Athletics Director at The Ohio State University. Today, he released the following statement supporting the Black Lives Matter movement: Racism has been declared a public health crisis; hate has no place in civil society. Over the past decade, Buckeye student-athletes…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has released a Model Code of Student Conduct for colleges to adopt, and it’s a tremendous advance for student liberties on campus. All colleges should adopt this Model Code (with slight improvements, I believe). Too many colleges have vague and repressive provisions in…
BY A UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN FLORIDA* In one of my final classes in May, students started talking about how well J. K. Rowling described moments like the one we’re living through now, when young people worry about the great evil that hangs over them, and the adults in charge refuse to come out of denial.…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The American Historical Association (AHA) has issued a statement urging a reckoning with the United States’ deplorable record of violence against African Americans, a record that stretches back centuries. The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers stands within this sordid national tradition of racist violence. It…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday I posted to this blog a piece that compared the current protests against police violence with the urban rebellions of prior years, especially the 1960s. In it I wrote that “the looting, arson, and window-smashing that have marred the overwhelmingly peaceful protests . . . may have been carried out by…
BY KELLY HAND Over the past few months, Academe Blog has published many posts—by contributing editors, other regular bloggers, and guest bloggers—about the pandemic and its impact on higher education. Our collective preoccupation with this topic is not surprising, since we all live with the daily consequences of the pandemic, even as it has become…