BY BILL V. MULLEN A dangerous and broadly worded bill making faculty vulnerable to termination for not conforming to a state legislature’s definition of political diversity will likely be voted on by the Indiana state legislature on Tuesday, February 27th. Senate Bill 202 mandates that in order to receive tenure faculty must demonstrate that they…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday, February 26, I’ll be talking about the AAUP’s recent special investigation report, “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System,” online with John A. Douglass of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. Here’s the Center’s description of the event: In their self-proclaimed “war on…
BY NEIL KRAUS “The public has lost confidence in higher education.” This narrative is everywhere, its ubiquity reminiscent of the failing K–12 schools refrain post–A Nation at Risk. News stories about polling results, opinion pieces advocating increased online education, and consultants seeking to sell a wide range of products remind us of the public’s declining…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’m a historian of Russia by training, but I guess I didn’t realize that there’s apparently no double jeopardy rule, at least with respect to sentencing, in Russia. Turns out that I—and many others—celebrated too soon when back in December we learned of the release of renowned Marxist sociologist and university professor…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY You may remember several years ago a phenomenon called “the last lecture.” It began with the heartbreaking story of Randy Pausch, who was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with cancer and literally gave his last lecture in September 2007. That became a book in 2008…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, the Catholic University of America (CUA) fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg one week after she invited doula Rachel Carbonneau to address her class, Psychology 379: Lifespan Development. Doulas coach women during the birthing process, and Carbonneau discussed helping “birthing persons” deal with having abortions and assisting transgender men. One…
BY ERIC SCARFFE AND KATHERINE VALDE After the initial draft of House Bill (HB) 999 began circulating online last year, talk of Florida could be heard in the halls of almost every institution of higher education in the United States. As acting chapter president of the United Faculty of Florida at Florida International University, for…
BY SIOBHAN SENIER Following is the guest editor’s introduction to the winter 2024 issue of Academe, out this week. The full table of contents for the issue is available here. In memoriam David Golumbia* In December 2020, a group of leading scholars of educational technology, including Jesse Stommel—a contributor to this special issue—held a landmark teach-in #AgainstSurveillance. The…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and MIT did a famously terrible job responding to Representative Elise Stefanik’s questions at the congressional hearing on “antisemitism on college campuses” this past December. But so far, their failure has been treated either as a case of incompetence in the realm 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…