Crowded school hallway

Put Democracy in The Community

By MATTHEW BOEDY Last month I encouraged faculty to put democracy on the syllabus.  In that post, I wrote: “No one is coming to save us. We all have to do this together.” To further that call, I urge faculty now to put democracy in the community.  AAUP unions and advocacy conferences do a lot…

Gradebook show a table listing letter grades, including an A-, a B, and an A.

Your Gradebook Is Not Your Friend

BY JONATHAN REES I am old enough to have used a physical gradebook when I started teaching. It looked like it was filled with graph paper, but there was definitely an extra-large space on the left for the students’ names and room to do some calculating all the way on the other side. I abandoned…

Indiana state flag with blue background and golden torch surrounded by golden stars appears over a white backgrouns in distorted form, suggesting an incomplete or erased image of the flag with jagged edges

In Defense of Abdulkader Sinno

By JOHN K. WILSON In a breathtaking assault on academic freedom, Indiana University has suspended Abdulkader Sinno, an associate professor of political science and Middle Eastern studies, for the crime of reserving a room for a speech that the administration (in direct violation of the First Amendment) attempted to ban. Sinno reserved a room for…

A microphone in focus in front of a podium that holds a phone, a sheet of paper, a closed notepad, and a pen

What Those College Presidents Should Have Said

BY MARJORIE HEINS The disastrous December 5 congressional hearing in which three university presidents were lambasted for allegedly not dealing with antisemitism on campus was a political ambush from the start, and the presidents, instead of blandly acquiescing in some outrageously inappropriate questioning, needed to respond with righteous indignation. The tone was set early on…

Watching Fascism in Real Time

BY JENNIFER RUTH I think he meant “scalped.” Right-wing activist Chris Rufo posted “SCAPLED: Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns” on X at 10 am today. He then reposted someone saying, “Claudine Gay’s is a huge scalp. No doubt about it. Especially when combined with Liz Magill’s a week ago. But we cannot rest on our…

Virginia state seal, with a woman in a blue Roman toga, the allegorical figure of virtue, stepping on a man in a purple toga, the allegorical figure of tyranny, above the state motto "Sic semper tyrannis" (meaning "Thus always to tyrants") appears on a blue background

Who Rules Virginia’s Public Universities?

BY TIMOTHY KAUFMAN-OSBORN Much has been said about the radical right’s assault on the autonomy of US public higher education and that campaign’s subversion of academic freedom. Today, for example, we all know about Florida’s Stop WOKE Act as well as it successor, SB 266, which expressly prohibits faculty from teaching that “systemic racism, sexism,…