BY OU-AAUP Two recent incidents put the University of Oklahoma (OU) in the forefront of national and international news. On November 22, ICE detained Vahid Abedini, Professor of Iranian Studies at OU and H-1 B visa holder, as he was boarding his flight from Oklahoma City to attend a conference on Middle Eastern Studies in…
BY ELLIOT BENJAMIN I joined the AAUP this fall and recently attended both a general member meeting and a meeting for the AAUP’s at-large chapter. I voiced my interests and concerns about attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and academic freedom at the at-large meeting, where it was recommended that I share on…
BY RANA JALEEL As chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, I do not make it a habit to respond to criticism that does not engage with the issues raised in Committee A reports. I will make an exception for Don Eron’s “The AAUP’s Title VI Statement Denies Reality” because it…
BY LOUISE PAY Understanding the strategy behind ideological attacks on university employees is the only way to counter them effectively. It’s easy to dismiss cases like the recent incident at the University of Oklahoma (OU), where a graduate instructor’s grading decision was amplified into a public controversy on X (formerly Twitter) by the OU chapter…
BY DON ERON The AAUP’s recent statement On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom is a potentially useful report that self-destructs with the use of a single quote, on which the report—and the organization as a whole—wages its credibility. As a result, nobody who doesn’t already agree with everything the report says is likely to take it, or…
BY DAVID PICKUS AND ROBERT NIEBUHR Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just a tool, they say. For universities, the idea is that this tool enhances learning. Furthermore, the promise continues that AI is a great equalizer that will increase access to knowledge. Our objection to AI in universities does not center on the march of technology,…
BY JACKIE STEVENS Northwestern University’s Interim President Henry Bienen announced on Friday the university had violated commitments to its faculty and students in order to appease an autocrat. Bienen claimed the agreement was signed to restore federal funding but has withheld the appendices indicating the affected grants and contracts. The scope of restored funding and…
BY SIBESO LISULO What happens when a university, the very institution tasked with speaking truth to power, cannot afford the cost of its own voice? This is not a theoretical question but a lived reality for a lot of academics in the Global South. I explore this grim reality in “Navigating Fiscal Precarity and the…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week the AAUP released a report, In Defense of an Independent and Representative Faculty Voice: The Case of Faculty Senates, prepared by a subcommittee of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance. I am a member of this committee and helped write the report, which demonstrates how recent state legislative actions…
BY AFSHAN JAFAR We have recently seen accelerating legislative and political attacks on faculty governing bodies at state institutions, including legislation recently enacted in Indiana, Ohio, Utah, and especially Texas. In a recently published report titled In Defense of an Independent and Representative Faculty Voice: The Case of Faculty Senates, the AAUP’s Committee on College…