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…
BY HANK REICHMAN The recently released preliminary report of the AAUP’s special committee to review an apparent pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida, which I am co-chairing, concludes that “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically…
BY ADRIANNA KEZAR, JOHN W. CURTIS, EMILY KOREN, AND KC CULVER The answer to the question our title poses is not very much—yet. There are serious challenges facing higher education in the United States today, from efforts to restrict teaching “uncomfortable” subjects to new and repeated attacks on tenure and the persistent underfunding of colleges,…
BY SIOBHAN SENIER Few faculty have the knowledge—or the time—to consider how information about us and our work is being collected and used. AAUP’s Academe magazine is soliciting contributions for a special issue on data mining and learning analytics, especially as these phenomena affect faculty governance and workload. What data, exactly, are colleges and universities…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The news that Cornell University’s administration sternly rejected a student demand for trigger warnings has spread across the country for the past month. The New York Times reported that “the conflict illustrates a stark divide in how different generations define free speech” with repressive students on one side while “proponents of…
BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER It makes sense for an administrator to be sued in court for violating the law. As a suit proceeds against University of Colorado Colorado Springs chancellor Venkat Reddy, charged with violating the civil rights of an employee, there has been no word from campus officials. It also makes sense for a university…