BY CONNOR GIBSON New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer’s new book Dark Money includes details that bolster concerns publicized by UnKoch My Campus, and students and professors across the United States who have blown the whistle on Charles Koch’s cooptation of higher education programs. Universities are at the heart of Charles Koch’s lobbying model, which after…
BY MARTIN KICH In “Scott Walker and Higher Education in the Media,” the article that I have contributed to the January-February issue of Academe, I have tried to show that it matters how professional journalists frame attacks on higher education, especially when the attacks are ideologically driven. I have focused on Scott Walker’s attempts to…
BY HENRY REICHMAN In an important piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week, “Watch What You Say: How Fear is Stifling Academic Freedom,” Fredrik deBoer, who teaches at Purdue University, made the essential connection between violations of academic freedom and the academic labor market. Seeking to explain “the pervasive sense of fear that…
BY HENRY REICHMAN Teresa Buchanan, the Louisiana State University (LSU) education professor terminated over strong objections from a faculty review committee and the Faculty Senate, last week filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against the president of LSU and other top administrators for violating her free speech and due process rights by firing her last…
BY MARTIN KICH Trying to find and provide any sort of coherent explanation for how all of the threads of this story can be concurrently accurate would be like trying to pull apart a 500-pound ball of scotch tape: “Florida State University has settled a lawsuit filed by Erica Kinsman, the woman who accused Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston of rape back in…
BY HENRY REICHMAN The following statement was released January 20 by the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA). A link to their petition can be found below. The University of California is currently considering introducing a new pension plan for its employees hired after 2016. These proposed changes will dramatically reduce pension benefits…
BY HENRY REICHMAN The Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) awards fellowships to academics who are facing threats in their home countries. These fellowships support visiting academic appointments at institutions of higher learning outside the fellows’ home countries, where they may continue their teaching and/or research in safety. The program’s emphasis is on…
BY JONATHAN REES I wouldn’t normally post here in order to send you somewhere else, but in the is case I’m going to make an exception. In an earlier form, this article at Hybrid Pedagogy was the paper I gave at the AAUP’s annual meeting last June. It’s chock full of good AAUP-ish issues that…
BY AARON BARLOW On January 20, the University of California Board of Regents took the incredibly rare step of dismissing a tenured professor for cause, a sanction that has occurred only a handful of times in the University’s history. Rob Latham, Professor of English at UC Riverside, was dismissed, over the recommendation of the UCR…
BY MARTIN KICH What follows is a petition posted to Change-org by Seth Alterman, asking for public support for a petition protesting the elimination of the campus police force at Dean College, which is located outside of Boston. The officers had just chosen to unionize when the college suddenly announced that it was outsourcing campus…