Videos Worth Viewing and Sharing

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following are videos of the candlelight vigil at the University of Virginia campus: https://youtu.be/cITuxcGlAr8 https://youtu.be/mm7B4U6745k https://youtu.be/oYjshqCuyTw https://youtu.be/KDuqCpOCqEM https://youtu.be/extOrNa42h4 This next video is from Vice and documents the White Nationalist rally in Charlottesville; It highlights the travesty of Trump’s false equivalency: https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg. This final video is from Disney Studios. Made 1947,…

Why White Supremacists Shouldn’t Be Banned

BY JOHN K. WILSON Today’s decision by the University of Florida to ban rental of space for an event by white supremacist Robert Spencer is a threat to free speech on campus, and the reasoning behind it poses a danger to a wide range of speech. University of Florida president W. Kent Fuchs justified his…

Assault on Higher Education: A Conservative Critique

BY HANK REICHMAN Most members of the AAUP, myself included, identify politically on the left side of the political spectrum, as do a majority of American faculty members, especially in the humanities and social sciences.  But the AAUP’s mission is to “advance academic freedom and shared governance” for all faculty members, regardless of their political…

How to Build a Great Public University

BY HANK REICHMAN Recently I had occasion to look a bit into the history of the University of California at Berkeley, where I earned my doctorate and in whose shadow I have lived most of my adult life.  In doing so, I encountered an interesting document, “Shared Governance at the University of California: An Historical…

VIDEO: AAUP Colorado Academic Freedom Symposium

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is reposted with permission from the website of the Colorado state conference of the AAUP.  Despite that the symposium gods burdened Boulder with an inevitable spring blizzard, the AAUP Academic Freedom Symposium at CU-Boulder on April 29th was inspiring and memorable. The melodramatic weather could not discourage participants or…

“On Many Sides?” Not in Academia!

BY HANK REICHMAN Blowhard-in-chief Donald Trump’s condemnation of “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides” in the wake of this weekend’s events in Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia (UVA), has been criticized so extensively and justifiably, even by members of his own party — many of whom themselves bear responsibility…

UVA Responds to Mayhem at White Nationalists’ Rally

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH   The following are four statements issued by the University of Virginia and President Theresa A. Sullivan over the last 36 hours. They are presented from the most recent to the least recent, and they are followed by news updates.   President Sullivan Condemns Demonstration Violence As events have unfolded on…

Wordplay III: Politics Edition

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH   In this series, I have highlighted headlines that are cleverly expressed, making use of puns, irony, figurative language, or unexpected word choices to grab a reader’s attention. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has so unabashedly flouted all sorts of political conventions that headline writers have felt freer to write headlines…

Sharpening the case for American higher education - on chalk board

College Leaders Must Sharpen the Case for Higher Education

BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL At the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) in Minneapolis last week, there was a good deal of attention paid to how higher education should address the steady decline in support for America’s colleges and universities among consumers (that is, students and families) and…