Terminated St. Edward's University professor Shannan Edwards speaking at the AAUP's 2019 annual meeting.

Holding St. Edward’s University to Its True Mission

BY SHANNAN H. BUTLER The following remarks were presented on Saturday, June 15, at the AAUP’s 105th annual meeting, which voted to place St. Edward’s University on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations. You can read the report of the AAUP’s investigating committee here.  In all honesty, I do not wish to be here today. Please…

Why Reducing Law School Debt Will Not Increase Public Interest Work

BY STEVEN LUBET When the University of Alabama returned over $21 million to its largest-ever single donor, and removed his name from its law school, it either was or wasn’t because of his outspoken opposition to the state’s ultra-restrictive new abortion law. According to Hugh Culverhouse, Jr., “the administrators at the university [chose] zealotry over…

Organizational Changes to the AAUP

BY GWENDOLYN BRADLEY We are pleased to announce that the AAUP will be moving forward with organizational changes after affirmative votes at last week’s AAUP annual meeting and AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress regular meeting. Both bodies voted overwhelmingly to proceed with a package of changes that combines the AAUP-CBC and the AAUP. The AAUP-CBC will…

The Regent Who Wouldn’t Leave

BY NICHOLAS FLEISHER (Cross-posted from Language Politics) “[F]ixed terms of members of boards shall expire on May 1.” So says Wis. stat. 15.07(1)(c), the portion of state law that governs when the terms of state board members—including members of the UW System Board of Regents—come to an end. So it was curious to see that…

The Pitfalls of Online “Education”

BY HANK REICHMAN Two days ago I posted a piece on this blog about graduate student debt in which I cited an article in the New York Times that reported, among other things, that students in an online social work program at the University of Southern California (USC) averaged an extraordinary $109,486 in student loan…

chalkboard with cloud drawing and lightbulb laid on top of it

A Simple Proposal for Ending the Jobs Crisis

BY PATRICK FESSENBECKER It is the time of year again when too many brilliant literature scholars find out that they will not be receiving a tenure-track job, and, as in Jacquelyn Ardam’s eloquent lamentation, that their possibilities for staying in the profession are over. The statistics on the situation are stark. Humanities doctorates are taking…