BY MATTHEW BOEDY As Emory University sent police in late April to raid a student protest encampment—during which at least three faculty were arrested, one thrown to the ground—my state’s largest newspaper asked me as president of the state AAUP conference for my thoughts on the national situation that engulfed more than seventy-five public college…
BY HASSAN MELEHY “That flag will stand here as long as I’m chancellor,” Lee Roberts, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, proudly proclaimed on Tuesday, April 30, after restoring the American flag to the pole adorning Polk Place on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. As the campus community and many…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Portland State University has no quads on which to pitch tents, but running between some of our major buildings, including the library, are park blocks owned by the city. When threatened with trespassing by Portland Police, the students moved their protest from the grass onto the steps of the library. From there,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Below is the May 10 “Statement of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Penn Administration’s Decision to Arrest Students and Faculty and the University’s Imposition of Mandatory Leaves of Absence on Six Students.” We condemn in the strongest possible terms the decision of the Penn administration to call in riot police…
BY ALAN SINGER Academic freedom is often paired with freedom of speech, enshrined in the Bill of Rights as part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. But freedom of speech is not absolute, and neither is academic freedom. Academic freedom is bound by the same legal restraints as freedom of speech, but…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the spring 2024 issue of Academe, “Race and the AAUP,” out this week. The full table of contents for the issue can be found here. This issue of Academe takes an overdue step toward reconsidering the role of race in the AAUP’s history. In a time of backlash against racial…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MILWAUKEE AAUP CHAPTER We are reposting this statement, published today on the UWM AAUP chapter website, with permission of the chapter. On Friday, May 3, UWM’s administration submitted a proposal to close the College of General Studies (CGS) and lay off all of its employees. This program discontinuance proposal is the…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE We are now seeing how holocausts happen. We are seeing how people who dare to speak out against massive state violence—in this case, college students protesting Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza—are being beaten and arrested at the behest of university leaders, who in turn are acting as agents of the Israel-allied US…
BY ISAAC KAMOLA In February I gave a talk at Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought, alongside colleagues discussing the question “Where is the University?” The panel was planned prior to Columbia’s then-shocking ban on Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. In January, we inquired about the status of the boycott…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Yesterday, Columbia threatened student protesters, “if you do not leave by 2 p.m., you will be suspended pending further investigation.” This interim suspension included banishment from campus, a prohibition on attending classes, and eviction from campus housing. All organizations committed to campus free expression should call for a total ban on…