POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH The Coalition for Action in Higher Ed (CAHE) is mobilizing again this year for another Day of Action on April 17. Last year, more than 100 campuses participated in the Day of Action, holding events, rallies, viewing parties for the teach-in, and meetings to strategize. To bring campuses together simultaneously, CAHE…
BY FRANK RITTER ORCID is an ID number authors can request from a consortium, primarily created by for-profit publishers. It is nominally free and intended to be unique to individuals. It is designed to be a database primary key to tie all records of an individual together. Using ORCID is a conflict of interest because…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ, TIM GIBSON, AND JAMES FINKELSTEIN This blog post is the second in a series on the transformation of George Mason University’s board. Read part I here. From Conservative Oversight to Extreme Partisan Activism In recent years, George Mason University’s Board of Visitors (BOV) has dramatically transformed from conservative oversight to extreme partisan…
BY JAMES FINKELSTEIN, BETHANY LETIECQ, AND TIM GIBSON From Conservative Oversight to Extreme Partisan Activism Republican governors in Virginia have long appointed conservatives to university governing boards, but nowhere has this been more pronounced than at George Mason University. This trend began in July 1996, when Governor George Allen appointed Edwin Feulner, co-founder and president…
BY DALE E. MILLER In a recent op-ed in The Hill titled “Our Universities Need Both Free Speech and Diversity Protections to Succeed,” Austin Sarat makes a vital point: “Free speech advocates should welcome . . . efforts to make colleges and universities more diverse and inclusive.” Yet he omits an equally vital point: The…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Following is the guest editor’s introduction to the winter 2025 issue of Academe, out this week. The full table of contents for the issue is available here. We live in a world at war. According to the United Nations, the current century can be characterized as “a new era of conflict and violence.” The…
BY JAMES VERNON Ed. note: On Monday, February 3, Michael Burawoy, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and lifelong activist, was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street near his Oakland home. We in the AAUP join with our colleagues at Berkeley and world-wide in mourning his untimely…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH As readers are no doubt aware, the problem of undemocratic professional associations is coming more and more to the fore as members attempt to hold their scholarly and professional associations accountable in some way over the genocide in Gaza and its concomitant scholasticide. A veritable new and necessary genre has emerged:…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Yesterday, the Department of Education announced investigations into Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, explaining that “widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported” at these five institutions. Given the confusion that reigns in and over higher education today, it’s worth trying…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The AAUP has issued a new statement, “Against Anticipatory Obedience,” that warns colleges to avoid “acting to comply in advance” before repression is actually required by the Trump administration. The danger of anticipatory obedience applies not just to colleges censoring speech, but also to national organizations seeking to influence Trump’s actions.…