BY MARC STEIN As the academic year begins for California State University, the largest public university system in the United States, it’s a good time to review last year’s faculty-tenure-density report card for the state’s twenty-three campuses. The results—one B, seven Cs, twelve Ds, and three Fs—suggest that CSU administrators might need to work harder…
BY KATHRYN KLEPPINGER AND GWU COLLEAGUES On Friday, August 11, administrators at West Virginia University announced an “academic transformation” that would cut 32 majors and possibly 169 faculty positions across the university, including the entire World Languages Department. Of particular concern to us, as language faculty at The George Washington University, was the misrepresentation of our…
BY JILL R. EHNENN AND CAROLYN BETENSKY Over the past few weeks, three scholars from political science and English departments—Corey Robin (political science, Brooklyn College and CUNY), Ted Underwood (English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Eleanor Courtemanche (English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)—have offered incisive and poignant reflections on what ChatGPT means to them, and us,…
BY JAMIE GONZALES The impending closure of the UH LGBTQ Resource Center caused by the passing of Senate Bill 17 weighs heavy on my heart. For those unfamiliar with SB 17, it states that “the governing board of an institution of higher education shall ensure that each unit of the institution: (1) does not, except…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On August 14, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) issued a report, “Lifting The Fog: Restoring Academic Freedom & Free Expression At Cornell University,” that made policy recommendations for how Cornell can improve its climate for free speech. Keith Whittington at Reason called the report “a valuable agenda for faculty across…
BY APARAJITA DE As the sixth poorest state in the nation, West Virginia has always identified a large part of its working-class (primarily) white population as coal miners. With the steady downgrading of coal and related industries, the working class’s only way out of poverty and into alternative livelihoods seemed to be housed in the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH On the August 3 episode of the Progress Texas podcast, guests discussed the recent incidents of political interference at Texas A&M University. One situation involved trustee interference in the hiring of distinguished professor of journalism Kathleen McElroy and the subsequent resignation of President Katherine Banks and the other involved the suspension and…
BY MIKE BUDD “Don’t mourn—organize!” Joe Hill, union organizer, executed 1915 There’s a lot to mourn in Florida (and elsewhere) right now, not only but especially in our colleges and universities. According to an AAUP preliminary report in May 2023, academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a…
BY YOVANNA PINEDA With a supermajority in the state legislature, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has passed his dream legislation, which seeks to punish those who think differently from him as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male with zero tolerance for the state’s diverse citizens, including African Americans, transgender and LGBTQ+ communities, and immigrants from nearly two…
BY HOLLIS F. GLASER As a community college professor, I’ve been hearing a lot about “workforce development,” the importance of getting our students ready for jobs. This has been coming down to us with a particular degree of alarm and urgency, an initiative that is college- and university-wide. We are hearing about it in our…