BY HANK REICHMAN Today the New York Times published an article recounting the continuing struggle at Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York, over the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and students. To briefly summarize, three weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Department of…
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 KARMA R. CHÁVEZ Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Callie Kennedy and Parham Daghighi, former teaching assistants (TAs) in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. I will detail the specific reason for our acquaintance, but the broader reason has to do with the…
By MATTHEW BOEDY Last month I encouraged faculty to put democracy on the syllabus. In that post, I wrote: “No one is coming to save us. We all have to do this together.” To further that call, I urge faculty now to put democracy in the community. AAUP unions and advocacy conferences do a lot…
BY JONATHAN REES I am old enough to have used a physical gradebook when I started teaching. It looked like it was filled with graph paper, but there was definitely an extra-large space on the left for the students’ names and room to do some calculating all the way on the other side. I abandoned…
By JOHN K. WILSON In a breathtaking assault on academic freedom, Indiana University has suspended Abdulkader Sinno, an associate professor of political science and Middle Eastern studies, for the crime of reserving a room for a speech that the administration (in direct violation of the First Amendment) attempted to ban. Sinno reserved a room for…
BY MARJORIE HEINS The disastrous December 5 congressional hearing in which three university presidents were lambasted for allegedly not dealing with antisemitism on campus was a political ambush from the start, and the presidents, instead of blandly acquiescing in some outrageously inappropriate questioning, needed to respond with righteous indignation. The tone was set early on…
BY JONATHAN REES The key part of what the AAUP Redbook has to say about the role of faculty in the selection of a new university president is in the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities: “Joint effort of a most critical kind must be taken when an institution chooses a new president. The…
BY JENNIFER RUTH I think he meant “scalped.” Right-wing activist Chris Rufo posted “SCAPLED: Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns” on X at 10 am today. He then reposted someone saying, “Claudine Gay’s is a huge scalp. No doubt about it. Especially when combined with Liz Magill’s a week ago. But we cannot rest on our…
BY TIMOTHY KAUFMAN-OSBORN Much has been said about the radical right’s assault on the autonomy of US public higher education and that campaign’s subversion of academic freedom. Today, for example, we all know about Florida’s Stop WOKE Act as well as it successor, SB 266, which expressly prohibits faculty from teaching that “systemic racism, sexism,…