BY HANK REICHMAN In a letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the larger Berkeley community, 76 faculty members from various departments have called for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the so-called “Free Speech Week” to be held on campus September 24-27. The week is sponsored by the Berkeley Patriot,…
BY JAY SMITH My article in the current issue of Academe, “Academic Freedom, Meet Big-Time College Sports,” tells a story about academic censorship. It provides a blow-by-blow account of the process whereby deans in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill intervened in departmental course scheduling in order to prevent the teaching of…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL The first indications are in on how the academic year is likely to go. In the pomp and ceremony that surrounds the opening of the school year, deep concerns emerge behind-the-scenes in all but the best endowed institutions as the numbers come in. There are no alternative facts to hide what…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This resolution has passed the Senate without debate and with Unanimous Consent. It now goes to President Trump for his signature. In the Senate of the United States Mr. Warner (For Himself, Mr. Kaine, Mr. Gardner, And Mr. Isakson) Introduced the Following Joint Resolution. JOINT RESOLUTION Condemning the violence and…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new September–October issue of Academe focuses on a profession that increasingly finds itself “in the crosshairs.” Articles address recent and historical instances of targeted harassment of faculty, the obligations of tenure-track faculty toward colleagues on contingent appointments, and the suppression of a course scrutinizing collegiate athletics. Follow the links in…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The first item is an article written by Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison for the National Review. Titled “DeVos Moves to Reign in the Campus Kangaroo Courts” and sub-titled “Her Fine Speech and Pledge to Act Are Worth Commending,” the article opens with the following paragraphs: In an anticipated speech…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following is the text of the speech posted on the Department of Education website. Thank you Dean Henry Butler for the kind introduction and for the opportunity to be here. Thank you President Angel Cabrera for your leadership of George Mason University. And to the students and faculty with…
BY HANK REICHMAN Recently installed University of California at Berkeley (UCB) Chancellor Carol Christ has proclaimed this to be the campus’s “free speech year.” As part of that effort Christ has announced that the infamous bigot-provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose talk at Berkeley was canceled February 1 in the face of violent protests, would return to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for IndyWeek, which serves the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, Erica Hellerstein reports: After months of contentious back-and-forth, the UNC Board of Governors voted this morning [Friday, September 8] to ban the UNC Center for Civil Rights from doing legal work on behalf of the state’s poor and minority…
BY HANK REICHMAN “We can respect the right of free speech without having to respect the ideas being uttered.” — Joan W. Scott, “On Free Speech and Academic Freedom” (forthcoming) This is the final installment in a four-part series. Part I may be found here; part II is here; part III is here. Academic Freedom…