BY JUDY ROHRER This past Fourth of July weekend was one of the hottest in history, not just because of climate catastrophe but also the white-hot imperialist racism “born in the U.S.A.” The scorching weekend started with the Supreme Court’s denial of historical and ongoing US settler-colonial and racial structural violence in its decision to…
BY HANK REICHMAN On May 15, Medaille University in Buffalo, New York (until last summer, Medaille College) announced that it will cease operations and close after 148 years on August 31. The announcement came less than a week after neighboring Trocaire College informed Medaille it would pull out of an agreement to purchase the school,…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a DEI committee? At the University of Texas–Austin, Professor Kathleen McElroy served on the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity. She also wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, entitled “The Importance of Faculty Diversity Is…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In the wake of last month’s horrific Supreme Court decision overturning affirmative action, an organization called Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) filed a federal civil rights complaint against Harvard University, challenging their legacy admissions policy. As LCR litigation fellow Michael Kippins put it in a press release on their website: Harvard’s practice…
BY NORRIS M. HAYNES The US Supreme Court has recently ruled that colleges and universities can no longer use race as a factor in college admissions. This ruling was the result of a specific challenge to admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In their complaint, the plaintiffs, an organization called…
BY MARK S. JAMES In section II of his concurring opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Justice Clarence Thomas seems to suggest that affirmative action can be justified for elite colleges and universities, such as Harvard and the University of North Carolina, if they can explain how their past discriminatory treatment against people…
BY MARK S. JAMES One of the most discussed passages from the Supreme Court’s majority opinion on affirmative action comes at the very end. It reads: At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality…
BY JENNIFER RUTH My colleague on various AAUP committees, Dr. Derryn Moten, emailed me and others today on the occasion of the ruling. His words offer perspective that someone like John Roberts is incapable of contributing and I asked if I could share the email on the blog. He begins with a quote from the…
POSTED BY THE AAUP The history of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) since its founding in 1915 has coincided with racial upheaval and transformation in the academy at large, from desegregation to current struggles for racial justice. Academe, the magazine of the AAUP, invites proposals for articles that would examine the Association’s work over…
BY HANK REICHMAN I usually admire American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner’s writings, but a short piece published online today, “The Republican Attack on Tenure,” got my hackles up a bit. Most of the piece is fine, calling appropriate attention to the assault on both tenure and academic freedom being waged by the GOP in red…