BY JENNIFER RUTH Yesterday, the AAUP announced the release of Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System. The fifty-three page report represents almost a year’s worth of work by dedicated staff and volunteer leaders and incisively lays out the ramifications of political interference for the survival of basic AAUP principles of…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Thursday, the Board of Trustees of the College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y., voted to close the school at the end of the current academic year. Saint Rose President Marcia White confirmed the decision in a letter to the campus community. Between 500 and 600 college employees will lose their…
BY BENJAMIN N. LAWRANCE This past election cycle many, if not most, eyes were on Ohio. Would it be the seventh state in a row to recognize a woman’s bodily integrity as a constitutional right? In the excitement (or disappointment) last Tuesday, however, the ongoing national struggle over history education received short shrift. Buried in…
BY LOGAN JOHNSON In 2020, state bans on teaching “divisive concepts” in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education began sweeping our nation. These prohibitions, referred to as educational gag orders, have put educators at risk of penalties if they incorporate materials and discussions in their classrooms regarding race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and minority narratives of United…
BY JOHN K. WILSON It’s always distressing during contentious times when neutral statements for free speech are twisted beyond recognition with false smears of bias and bigotry. In a November 27 essay in The Hill, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet denounced the American Association of University Professors for a November 15 statement, “Polarizing Times Demand…
BY JONATHAN REES Did you know that Donald Trump has promised to create a free national online university if he gets to become president again? You can read the basics of his proposal in Politico: Donald Trump wants to “revolutionize” higher education if elected president. And in a new campaign policy video, he is pledging…
BY KEVIN HOWLEY In recent weeks, college students across the country have raised their voices in support of the Palestinian people, whose collective punishment at the hands of the Israeli government and their enablers in the United States and across Western Europe is both shameful and horrific. For conservative culture warriors, pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college…
BY CORY JAMES YOUNG I was having a conversation with a graduate student in my department about a possible collaboration when we noticed the television. One of our colleagues was on the Iowa City news providing historical context about the ongoing crisis in Palestine and Israel. Then, even more unexpectedly, a student from my previous…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY I was asked by our state’s largest newspaper here in Georgia to write a column offering some priorities for higher education as lawmakers return in January for our annual legislative session. You can likely guess my priorities. Bigger budgets, better salary, and stopping culture war attacks on higher education. But those priorities…
BY RUBÉN MARTINEZ Crises in intellectual and religious thought have been opportunities for the reformulation of the basic principles and ideas of existing bodies of knowledge for decades. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realism raised the specter of the destructive character of accepted theories of law. In the 1960s, Vatican II, the twenty-first Roman…