BY AARON BARLOW Years ago, when we were walking our dogs in our new neighborhood, a man my age at the time (late-50s) stepped out of his house and got right in my face on the sidewalk. I refused to back away. He yelled at me about dog pee and poop. I didn’t yell back…
BY CHELSEA FOWLER Today is Equal Pay Day.* Tomorrow, April 11, 2018, the AAUP will release the 2017–18 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, which discusses salary and compensation across higher education institutions. There has been a growing trend in the United States in the past two decades of women’s postsecondary educational…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has written to Iran’s leader protesting the death in prison of an Iranian-Canadian university professor who was accused of spying by Iranian authorities. Kavous Seyed Emami, a dual-Canadian national, was arrested in January, and died in February in a Tehran prison, ostensibly by his…
BY HANK REICHMAN In June 2014 the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued a report, “On Partnerships with Foreign Governments: The Case of Confucius Institutes.” That report warned that Confucius Institutes, then established at some 90 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, may “function as an arm of the Chinese…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following press statement was issued by a group of graduate students at Columbia University, announcing Academic Freedom Week, a series of panel discussions to be held at Columbia April 9-11. Your silence will not protect you. ― Audre Lorde, The battle for academic freedom at our nation’s universities has been…
BY ELIZABETH J. MEYER The topic of free speech on college campuses has been an important one and one that continues to be debated particularly in the wake of Milo Yiannopolis’s speaking tour last year and the 2016 presidential election. With groups like Turning Point USA pouring significant resources into sponsoring conservative speakers like Ann…
BY AARON BARLOW Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, writes, “Our efforts to improve schools have worked well where people have led with courage. To say otherwise is wrong.” As one who has spent 25 of the last 40 years in the classroom, as a secondary-school teacher, an adjunct college instructor and as a full-time…
BY MARK HULSETHER This is day 40 or more (depending on how one counts) of a major strike in British universities, which has been nearly ignored by the news. (This and this are exceptions to the rule.) It is also day four or more (depending on how one counts) in the aftermath of an attack on…
BY WENDY LYNNE LEE Guest blogger Wendy Lynne Lee is a professor of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. On the morning after the 2016 election of Donald Trump many of us were bleary; some were despairing, and I was both. But I was also clear-headed and I understood then, just as I do now,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Earlier this month, Dixie State University (DSU) in Utah announced the suspension and planned termination of music department chair Glenn Webb and director of vocal activities Ken Peterson. But the reasons for this extreme action are quite dubious, and the violations of academic freedom, due process, and DSU policies are alarming.…