BY JONATHAN REES Way back when I was new to teaching I got into an argument with my then-department chairman about the textbook to assign in my American history survey course. I had my choice. He had a choice that he thought we should all assign because it was “the leading textbook in the field.”…
BY AARON BARLOW My embarkation on an academic career coincided with the rise of what we now call “social media,” then known as “the blogosphere.” At that time, many involved online cloaked themselves in anonymity in the mistaken belief that they couldn’t be discovered. That made me uncomfortable: There are many legitimate reasons for masking…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled in favor of John McAdams in his case against Marquette University, with the majority writing, “We conclude that the University breached the Contract by suspending Dr. McAdams for exercising his contractually protected right of academic freedom.” The Court ordered, “we hold the University to its…
BY JOHN K. WILSON As the 4th of July draws to a close, the day when Americans across the country believe they have a right to launch illicit explosives anywhere they want to, it’s an important time to talk about mistaken beliefs in fundamental rights. A New York Times news analysis last week titled, “How…
BY AARON BARLOW Fortunately for me, I teach on a campus where diversity is the norm. New York City College of Technology (one of the campuses of the City University of New York) is 33% Hispanic, 30% Black (non-Hispanic), 20% Asian and 11% White (non-Hispanic). The reversal of Obama-era Affirmative Action guidelines, clearly, is not…
BY HANK REICHMAN If there was a silver lining to be found in the cloud of partisan obfuscation and skewed logic that was Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling in Trump v. Hawaii, which upheld the president’s notorious Muslim ban, it was the decision’s formal repudiation of the Supreme Court’s infamous 1943 decision in Korematsu v.…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court in a narrow 5-4 ruling capped a week of outrageous decisions by declaring agency fee payments by non-union members unconstitutional in the public sector. The ruling, which overturned a unanimous 1977 decision supported by such conservative luminaries as William Rehnquist, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger,…
BY AARON BARLOW This afternoon, from 5:30 to 6:30, union members in New York City protested outside of the Federal Courts in lower Manhattan. The event, organized by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the faculty union of the City University of New York, drew hundreds of frustrated and angry people in what is surely one…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Several years ago, I spoke to a group of extraordinarily bright, committed colleagues from across a group of neighboring colleges and universities in a large metropolitan area. The subject – collaboration — was a precursor to a larger conversation about whether they might consider a merger of like-minded institutions to create…
POSTED BY STEVE MUMME AND MARGARET LECOMPTE Steve Mumme is a Professor at Colorado State University and the AAUP-Colorado Conference Co-President, and Margaret LeCompte is a Professor Emerita and President of the AAUP Chapter, University of Colorado at Boulder. Colorado’s college students are deemed by some to be civics deficient and University of Colorado Board of Regents…