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…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday night, June 1, through the following morning the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) crowded protesters arrested in downtown Los Angeles and Westwood into sheriff’s buses and brought them to Jackie Robinson Stadium. Located off-campus, on the grounds of the Los Angeles Veterans Health Administration and seating just 1,820, it…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I recorded a podcast with the New American Baccalaureate Project (NAB) in which we discussed academic freedom, both generally and in the context of the extraordinary developments of the past month. It has now been posted to NAB’s website. Here’s how they describe it: As protests spread across the US…
BY THE UC BERKELEY FACULTY ASSOCIATION The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is famed for its tough bargaining tactics in its dealings with its unions. From its ongoing conflict with AFSCME for failing to comply with its own rules around subcontracting, to a belligerent tendency to cancel AFT bargaining sessions at the…
BY AAUP WISCONSIN The following statement was released today by the AAUP’s Wisconsin state conference in response to the announcement of a sole finalist for University of Wisconsin system president. AAUP Wisconsin expresses its strong opposition to the selection of University of Alaska System President Jim Johnsen as the sole finalist for the position of…