BY MATTHEW BOEDY On April 8, our school had a gun incident that involved a student making threats against the campus. But this story isn’t about that scary situation. It’s about my school administration’s epic communications failure about the incident. Incidents like this show why principles of academic freedom and shared governance matter. It took…
BY BROOKE LOBER, ELI MEYERHOFF, AND EMILY SCHNEIDER The climate on American university campuses is dangerous. Administrators ban protests for Palestinian rights. Immigration and Customs Enforcement snatches students off the streets. The Trump administration revokes hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research. And all this is done in the name of protecting Jewish…
BY DAVID PALUMBO-LIU After Columbia University’s craven and apparently futile acceptance of all the conditions Donald Trump set before it to even start a conversation about getting its federal funding back, Harvard’s recent refusal to let the federal government insinuate itself into the core functions of higher education was a welcomed moment we should all…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement is republished here with permission of its organizers. The statement with a regularly updated list of signatories may also be found here. As Jewish faculty and staff at Northwestern University, we write today to defend the values of academic freedom, pluralism and independence that animate Northwestern and undergird…
BY THE AAUP We are excited to announce the publication today of the AAUP’s Policy Documents and Reports, known as the Redbook. It’s an indispensable resource for promoting sound academic practices on your campus. Bringing together foundational statements on academic freedom, shared governance, and other essential topics with new and revised documents—many with statistical or…
BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER As the national academic landscape makes clear, academic freedom battles are often diverted to or fought in the budgetary arena: Money talks! To ensure that the mission of the university is not overlooked by our administrators, our AAUP chapter has demanded greater transparency in budgetary decision-making processes. Instead, we receive annual notices…
BY ALLISON GAINER As faculty, we often find ourselves balancing pedagogy, policy, and student support. For students with disabilities, that support sometimes includes service dogs. These working animals are not pets or conveniences. They are medically necessary tools for independence, mobility, and safety. And yet, many of us have never been trained to support students…
BY ANTHONY DAVID VERNON What is proper duty? For Chinese philosopher Xunzi, proper duty included “the way of the ritual . . . and return to order.” Double booking breaks rituals and deviates from order. It is problematic for all parties, as we all have what Xunzi refers to as “a sense of duty” or…
BY WILLIAM D. ADAMS The following first appeared on Medium and is republished with the author’s permission. April 11, 2025 Only days after launching its attack on the Smithsonian Institution, the Trump administration and its DOGE shock troops came for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Last week, NEH grant recipients were notified that all…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following resolutions from the Academic Council of the University of California Academic Senate and from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Academic Senate were published this week. Their calls for unity and action should be widely circulated and embraced. Academic Council Statement: The Defense of the University April 8, 2025 Higher…