BY AARON BARLOW Fifty-plus years ago, the political right began a campaign to undermine the institutions of the American political and societal system. They were out of power and had found themselves far outside of the mainstream of both political parties; lacking responsibilities within any extant institutions, they had no commitment to those landmarks of…
BY HANK REICHMAN The University of Wisconsin-Superior announced this week that it will suspend 25 programs, including 9 majors, 15 minors and one graduate program, according to reports by the Duluth News-Tribune and Wisconsin Public Radio. Among the majors affected are sociology, theater, journalism and political science. The university has now suspended 40 programs since…
BY MICHAEL BEHRENT The “free speech” policy currently under consideration by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors could impose a “chill” on “constitutionally protected speech” on UNC campuses, according to a prominent First Amendment Scholar. Officers of the North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently spoke with Professor William P. Marshall…
BY HANK REICHMAN For seventeen years Georgette Fleischer taught first-year English, now first-year Writing, at Barnard College in New York. For most of those years she found Barnard a “wonderful place to work. We felt like our work was appreciated, and that meant a great deal,” she told a reporter in September. That changed, however,…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Every solution offered by a college or university faces a pending crisis in a different way. Wealthy institutions have the resources to weather challenges by kicking the can down the road, often for decades. That’s why it is significant that Harvard University last week issued a warning about its financial constraints…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND Happy Halloween! It’s Campus Equity Week, when faculty, students, and communities on campuses across the country shine a light on the increasingly precarious nature of academic work. The graphic below, created by AAUP digital organizer Mariah Quinn, captures the scary reality of our higher education system, in which contingent appointments now account…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for University World News, Brendan O’Malley reports that Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali is facing a death sentence in Iran after being convicted of spying for Israel. At the time of his arrest and detainment, Djalali was teaching disaster medicine at two European universities—the Karolinkska Institute in Sweden and the Vrije Universiteit…
BY JOHANN NEEM Johann N. Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. Recently, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General issued the findings of a long-awaited audit in which it concluded that Western Governors University (WGU) had defrauded the…
BY HANK REICHMAN The National Park Service has pulled funding for a Black Panther Party legacy project to be undertaken at the University of California at Berkeley in response to criticism by conservative organizations, according to reports in the San Francisco Chronicle and the East Bay Times. In September, the Park Service announced that it…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the Associated Press, Ryan J. Foley has reported on a former University of Iowa wrestler who has been arrested on federal charges because he used keyloggers to gain access to faculty accounts and thereby get advance copies of exams and to change his own grades and those of some…