BY MARTIN KICH This short piece titled “Trump Is Right!” has been posted to the libertarian blog Notes on Liberty by Edwin van de Haar: It is easy to emphasize all that is bad about the new American President. For sure, I think he is a clown who will do a few bad things to the US…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Last week, I posted an item on the proposals to eliminate tenure in Iowa and Missouri. Hank Reichman subsequently posted the AAUP’s statement on those proposals. Those proposals were made by Republican members of the state legislatures. In the intervening week, the Republican governors of both states have proposed substantial cuts…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Alaska Dispatch News, Tegan Hanlon reports: “The University of Alaska Anchorage Faculty Senate on Friday [January 20} voted no confidence in the leadership of the university system president, Jim Johnsen, saying faculty turnover had increased and morale had plummeted during Johnsen’s time in office. “The resolution, a nonbinding expression…
BY MARCELLA BENCIVENNI This is a guest post by Marcella Bencivenni, associate professor of history at CUNY Hostos Community College. The City University of New York (CUNY), the nation’s largest public urban university, has been recently the subject of several articles exposing its growing challenges: steep budget cuts, climbing enrollment and class sizes, infrastructure decay,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is an “alert” issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists: Authorities in Washington D.C. should drop rioting charges against at least three journalists arrested while covering protests on the day of the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police arrested Evan Engel, a…
BY HANK REICHMAN Privatization has failed. But a tuition-free college education in California is possible. That was the message this morning at a press conference in Berkeley introducing a new policy paper demonstrating how it is entirely feasible to provide today’s students with the same accessible low-cost university experience that California successfully offered its students…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH President Trump has signed an executive order reinstating President Reagan’s so-called “Mexico City Policy.” Writing for Huffington Post, Amanda Terkel summarizes the order as follows: “[It] is also known as the global gag rule, which was first put in place by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. It prohibits giving U.S. funding to international…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN This is a guest post by Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, the Baker Ferguson Professor of Politics and Leadership at Whitman College. Offering a sorry imitation of the Bard, I composed my recent history of shared governance in Wisconsin in the January–February issue of Academe as a tragedy in three acts. In my article, I explain…
BY JOSLIN MAR-DAI PICKENS This is a guest post by Joslin Mar-Dai Pickens, coauthor along with Sonya D. Hester and Harolyn Wilson, of the article, “Organizing Real Faculty Governance in Northern Louisiana,” in the January–February issue of Academe (please note that an AAUP member login is required to read the full article). Pickens is a member of…
BY MARJORIE HEINS Marjorie Heins is the author of Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge, a history of McCarthy era attacks on teachers and professors, of the Supreme Court’s initially acquiescent response, and of the Court’s eventual vindication of academic freedom in the 1967 Keyishian case. By Marjorie…