POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Rebecca Bodenheimer has contributed a freelance opinion piece to CNN that is very lucid, very galvanizing, and very much worth reading and sharing. In it, she connects to the frustrations being expressed by K-12 teachers in an ever-expanding number of states to the endemic frustrations of contingent faculty at the post-secondary…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Here is a photo of city boys getting rooftop swimming instruction in the 1920s. This is a more recent photo identified as showing a man swimming in a river near New Delhi in India. (I am not sure what the white stuff is, but I am fairly certain that it’s not…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The corruption at George Mason University has prompted some conservatives to jump to the defense of giving wealthy donors more influence. Jim Geraghty at National Review argues that “A Washington Post Scoop about the Koch Brothers Falls Apart.” But actually it’s Geraghty’s argument that quickly falls apart. According to Geraghty, “The headline in the…
BY JOERG TIEDE An investigative report is out today in a case that crystallizes the current right-wing assault on higher education. It involves issues that the AAUP has been working on intensively this year: faculty harassment and exaggerated controversies over free speech on campus. The case concerns Courtney Lawton, a graduate student and part-time lecturer…
BY AARON BARLOW In “From Austerity to Attacks on Scholars,” an article for Inside Higher Ed, Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud writes, “I discovered how the people attacking me were organized and trained through right-wing radio programs and websites in the language to use against intellectuals; they were set off like arrows from a bow”…
POSTED BY THE AAUP In an amicus brief filed on Friday, the AAUP emphasized the importance of faculty being able to use controversial language and ideas to challenge students in the classroom, and argued that Professor Teresa Buchanan’s academic freedom was violated when Louisiana State University dismissed her for making statements in the classroom that…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ When I joined the George Mason University faculty in 2013, I had already had a taste of what could be achieved when faculty, students, community members, and organizations work together in common cause. Earlier in my career, I helped organize a faculty union at Montana State University and, in my community-based work…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a post for Talking Union, Paul Garver provides details on the decision of Harvard University to recognize and to bargain with the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers. Some of the basic details of the vote on unionization are not especially surprising: Of the ca. 5000 eligible Harvard graduate students/research…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows are the opening paragraphs of a news report for the Associated Press written by Matthew Barakat: Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents. The…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE Fort Lewis College’s AAUP chapter registered a victory in March when President Dene Thomas announced that no faculty no tenured or tenure-track people will be eliminated as part of proposed FLC budget reductions. Her decision followed an FLC-AAUP analysis of the proposed budget that demonstrated cuts could be achieved without sacrificing…