Shortly after the 2016 election, the AAUP warned that we could be facing the greatest threat to academic freedom since the McCarthy period. It now appears that such a warning was not misplaced. Extremists in the administration, Congress, and several state houses have created an atmosphere in which “alternative facts” reign supreme, and which encourages the introduction of legislation that threatens the core principles of our democracy.
BY RUDY FICHTENBAUM This is a guest post by AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum, a professor of economics at Wright State University. In her speech at CPAC Secretary DeVos stated: “Now let me ask you: How many of you are college students? The fight against the education establishment extends to you too. The faculty, from adjunct…
BY AARON BARLOW Teaching the Alien and Sedition Acts to my journalism students the other day, I concentrated on this passage: The vituperative quality of the opposition press began to worry even the Federalists more and more, especially President Adams (even though the Federalist press was doing pretty much the same thing). A touchy and…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has issued a tentative set of recommendation for amendments to the Higher Education Act. While claiming to offer “freedom from overregulation,” in reality the NAS proposals would impose the most restrictive, intrusive, and repressive regulations on higher education in American history. The vast number of…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Thirty years ago, we all understood what the term “culture wars” meant. It was about Mapplethorpe vs. Helms and teaching dead white men vs. revisionist and black history. There were lines. Whichever side you were on, you knew where you stood. The battle lines changed and have morphed into something quite…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was released by the American Society of Journalists and Authors: A free press is one of the standards of American democracy. In the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Founding Fathers guaranteed the rights of a free press and free speech. Any attempt to…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Our work advocating for faculty may seem to be eclipsed, at present, by national events, but the stellar AAUP members in our Colorado Community College System (CCCS) Chapters, befriended now by scores of authors, activists, lawmakers and organizers around the country, tirelessly persist, in this, the Age of Persistence. It looks as…
BY HANK REICHMAN My title may be — indeed, probably is, alas — overoptimistic, but the rapid-fire sequence of events surrounding putrid provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, including the revoking of his invitation to speak at CPAC, the loss of his lucrative book deal, and finally, today, his forced resignation from Breitbart News, the repulsive fake news…
BY HANK REICHMAN A growing number of college and university presidents have spoken out against the Trump administration’s efforts to ban and deport immigrants and refugees. Some leading research universities have filed an amicus brief in support of the legal challenge to the initial ban. But a mere handful have been as outspoken about the…
BY AARON BARLOW Retraction Watch, one of my all-time favorite blogs, posted an interview today with psychologist John Antonakis, who had identified the five diseases of academic publishing, significosis, neophilia, theorrhea, arigorium and disjunctivitis. I was immediately struck by the first: Significosis is the incessant focus on producing statistically significant results, a well-known problem but one…