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…
BY CHRISTIAN K. ANDERSON AND PATRICIA SULLIVAN We are reprinting with permission this guest column published yesterday in the University of South Carolina Daily Gamecock. On April 25, 1963—60 years ago—Robert F. Kennedy spoke at a meeting of the University of South Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He was invited by…
BY JOSHUA KNICKERBOCKER In early 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) made headlines when one of the most popular AI-powered tools, ChatGPT, passed the medical licensing boards, as reported in an Insider story. The ability of AI to pass difficult examinations easily and reliably has prompted many scholars to question the implications for academia. ChatGPT is a…
BY HANK REICHMAN The so-called “heckler’s veto” is much in the higher ed news these days, with Inside Higher Ed this week running a piece, “Shouting Down Speakers Who Offend,” focusing on incidents at SUNY Albany, Stanford, and San Francisco State Universities. The Stanford incident has prompted two prior posts to this blog (here and here).…
BY HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR (H-PAD) Right now, public education on all levels in Florida and the rights of the state’s population are under attack by forces led by Governor Ron DeSantis. The governor’s “Anti-Wokeness” campaign threatens to eviscerate honest teaching of United States history and force people of color and the trans and LGBTQ+…
BY DAVID AUDRETSCH, CHRISTIAN FISCH, CHIARA FRANZONI, PAUL MOMTAZ, AND SILVIO VISMARA Academic freedom matters for many reasons. Our new study that is available for free download at SSRN empirically shows that academic freedom can be related to economic growth through more innovation. Examining 157 countries over the 1900–2015 period, the study concludes that academic…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In “Rutgers Unions Prepare to Surf the Strike Wave,” Hank Kalet wrote for the blog about the authorization-to-strike vote to be held at Rutgers. The vote was held and 94 percent of Rutgers AAUP-AFT members voted “yes.” Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway has been using scare tactics to intimidate the Rutgers community. In…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, Stanford Law School announced that it had suspended Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, in the wake of the outrage over the disruption by protesters of a Federalist Society speech by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Stanford must end this suspension immediately. Stanford’s suspension of Steinbach is…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH In a letter to the editor, AAUP president Irene Mulvey responded to a series of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which AAUP statements were invoked to argue for the primacy of either academic freedom or diversity, equity, and inclusion. This framing pits the two against one another, as…
By JOHN K. WILSON Christian Coons, an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, has been suspended and faces a hearing on March 20 that could lead to his dismissal. His crime? Sending emails to his colleagues about his department’s alleged past misconduct in hiring decisions. A university is seriously considering the dismissal…