BY JOHN SCHLUETER As I was writing my recent article for Academe, “In Search of What We Do,” my college was in the throes of reaccreditation, and faculty were tasked with standardizing their assessments of student work based on outcomes revised with the help of Bloom’s Taxonomy. However, for me—and I would venture to guess…
BY HANK REICHMAN Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Wang, arrested by Iranian authorities for alleged espionage, has now been in prison for over 900 days (see previous posts on this case here and here). February 20 will be a “day of action” in support of the imprisoned scholar, which will include a “call-a-thon” and rally…
BY HANK REICHMAN In 2017 California State University Chancellor Timothy White issued two controversial executive orders on general education and remediation that prompted a major backlash among faculty. Many opposed the substance of the orders, but most concerning was the Chancellor’s failure to engage faculty governance on either the system or campus levels. The CSU…
BY HANK REICHMAN In December I posted “Another Assault on Scholarship in Hungary,” reporting that László Lovász, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences had informed an emergency assembly of the Academy about a move by the government to drastically cut the institution’s funding. As I reported, “Innovation Minister László Palkovics had explained why he…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, the Loyola Phoenix, the student newspaper of Loyola University Chicago, published a remarkable editorial about the repressive media policy on campus. Loyola’s communications spokesperson, Evangeline Politis, had written to the student newspaper recently, angry that student journalists had dared to ask questions to faculty and staff at Loyola: “This…
BY KEITH E. WHITTINGTON Is it possible to go a month without a controversy about the extramural speech of a faculty member? Probably not. There are, after all, a lot of faculty out there, and they have greater unmediated access than ever before to put their views about matters both great and small before a…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND Winter 2019 | Vol. 105, No. 1 This issue of Academe addresses the questions of speech that have fueled the culture wars on college campuses in recent years. Articles discuss the assault on the public mission of higher education; the implications of a polarized political climate for faculty members, administrators, and students; and…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Stanley Kurtz is at it again: He has another bad idea for unnecessary and counterproductive legislation. In the past, he’s sought to impose mandatory penalties on disruptive protesters and rules for institutional neutrality. This time, it’s an attempt to force public colleges to have more debates and conservative speakers by enacting…
POSTED BY AAUP STAFF A clear majority of faculty at the University of New Mexico have declared their support for unionization in an official election petition filed today with the UNM Labor Management Relations Board. The UNM bargaining unit, comprising more than 1,600 full- and part-time faculty on five campuses—UNM’s main campus, in Albuquerque; UNM-Gallup;…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today Democracy Now!, the daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Rutgers University professor Juan González, ran a feature about the strike at Wright State University, which featured an interview with AAUP President and chief Wright State negotiator Rudy Fichtenbaum. You can watch it here: