CAUT Critical of Ontario Colleges’ Free Speech Policy

BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a statement released yesterday by the Canadian Association of University Teachers. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is giving a failing grade to a free speech policy developed by Ontario’s colleges without any consultation with faculty. “The colleges’ so-called free speech statement is a classic…

Studying Divergent Viewpoints about Speech on Campus

BY SUSAN E. RAMLO Now in my twenty-fifth year of teaching at a public urban university in the Midwest, I research subjective viewpoints mainly using a somewhat obscure, eighty-year-old methodology that has been gaining popularity. Q methodology (Q) is unique in its ability to scientifically study divergent viewpoints in a way that distinguishes and describes…

Autocracy in the Upper Midwest

BY JEFFREY SOMMERS The following open letter to the chancellor, provost, and faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) is reposted by permission from the blog of the UWM AAUP chapter.  Jeffrey Sommers is Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Global Studies at UWM. Dear Chancellor Mone, Provost Britz, and Colleagues, I could…

Science Under Siege at the Dept. of the Interior

BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday the welcome news arrived that scandal-ridden Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would, as previously hinted, be departing his post by year’s end.  The announcement came just days after release of a scathing 38-page report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Science under Siege at the Department of the Interior (DOI), which…

Going Above and Beyond

BY HANK REICHMAN Amidst all the bashing of professors as left-wing ideological thugs (but also sensitive “snowflakes”) who seek only to indoctrinate vulnerable students, the reality that the great majority of faculty members go out of their way to advise, mentor, and assist their students, regardless of politics or personal characteristics, frequently without remuneration for…

Proposed Changes to AAUP Organizational Structure

BY RUDY FICHTENBAUM AND PAUL DAVIS At their November 2018 meetings, the Council of the AAUP and the AAUP-CBC Executive Committee voted overwhelmingly to move forward with changes to our shared organizational structure. The changes, should they be approved at the June 2019 annual meeting, will streamline our governance and organizational structure. As is the…

Income Share Agreements: Improved Thinking on How to Fund a College Education

BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL At the most expensive U.S. colleges and universities, the advertised price now exceeds $70,000 per annum although most institutions are significantly below this level. Financial aid lowers the actual cost of attendance for many students. Still, American families are less willing to shoulder the expected family contributions that make a college…

Serving at Cross’s Purposes

BY RICHARD GRUSIN The following is reposted with permission from the blog of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee AAUP chapter.  Richard Grusin is Distinguished Professor of English at UWM. On Pearl Harbor Day, 2018, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents dropped its own economic bomb on the people of Wisconsin, approving raises ranging from $14,421…