This guest post is by J. Michael Rifenburg of the University of North Georgia: The NCAA was founded out of a need to provide more safety for students playing extracurricular sports, particularly football. A century later, safety issues may end the NCAA’s long run of lucrative dominance and governance of all thing intercollegiate athletics. According…
BY HANK REICHMAN As regular readers of this blog know well, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to decimate public funding for the University of Wisconsin System and erode the protections of tenure and shared governance have aroused broad opposition among faculty members. On the defensive, Walker has issued a series of misleading and outright false…
BY HANK REICHMAN The University of Chicago has earned well-merited praise for its powerful 2014 “Statement on Principles of Free Expression,” a document that has been endorsed by a growing number of institutions. That statement, authored by a committee chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law and former Provost…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Emanuel Goldman’s, “Why an Academic Boycott of Israel is Wrong,” appears in the May-June 2016 issue of Academe: Magazine of the A.A.U.P. The article is needlessly inflammatory and dismissive of ethical challenges to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Professor Goldman claims that its supporters, which includes many tens of thousands of students…
BY ANN MESCHER The following is a guest post by Ann Mescher, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Please join this urgent request from faculty members and students at the University of Washington. If you agree, please add your name to our petition linked below, and forward to your colleagues, family…
Today is the start of the Scholars at Risk 2016 Global Congress, “Universities in a Dangerous World: Defending Higher Education Communities and Values” at McGill University in Montreal. If you are not fortunate enough to be in Montreal in person with us, you can watch a livestream of all the events beginning today at 1pm…
BY HANK REICHMAN On June 4, following Committee A’s annual spring meeting, present and former AAUP leaders, activists, and staff members gathered in Washington to join family members and friends in honoring the memory of Jordan E. Kurland, who passed away in January at the age of 87, still actively employed by the AAUP. Jordan…
The editor of the Toledo Blade just published an editorial titled “A Bauble for a Buddy,” questioning both the appropriateness and the efficacy of John Kasich’s appointment of Richard Ross, a former state school superintendent, to the Bowling Green State University board of trustees. The appointment needs to be approved by the State Senate,…
Some of you may have seen the item in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Scott Scarborough’s resignation as President of the university of Akron [http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/akrons-controversial-president-will-step-down-immediately/111739?cid=pm&utm]. That article includes the official statement released by the university’s Board of Trustees. A follow-up article, “U of Akron Chief’s Resignation Ends a Rocky Presidency,” is available at:…