BY BILL BERGMAN Recently, I participated in an experiment that had several first-year seminar (FYS) instructors attend each other’s classes. It was an effort to see if we could improve our teaching techniques by observing colleagues. My first visit was to a FYS class in physics. Surprisingly, this ninety-minute first-year science class not only taught…
BY STEVE EASTON This blog post, which we are publishing without any changes, was submitted by the author in response to a January 26 post by John K. Wilson. The author wishes to note that the post expresses his personal views, not the views of his institution or the system that it is a part…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The rejection of the College Board’s AP course in African American Studies is only the latest in a series of disturbing news relating to education coming out of Florida. Other examples include the January 18 statement from the presidents of the twenty-eight institutions in the Florida College System declaring they will not…
BY JOHN K. WILSON There have been a lot of evil and stupid bills proposed by state legislators to abolish tenure and destroy academic freedom, but North Dakota’s House Bill 1446 sinks to new depths of depravity in the attacks on higher education. The Tenure with Responsibilities Act, introduced on January 18 by North Dakota…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Years ago, I was speaking with a colleague about one of the paradoxes of university life: tenured faculty enjoy more job security than almost any other occupational group in US society, yet they are often afraid to fight for their interests as a group. My colleague accounted for this lack of collective…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TENURE-STREAM ART HISTORY FACULTY The statement was issued on January 13 on the website of the UMN Department of Art History with the note, “No images other than the painting of Jonah and the Whale appear in this story.” The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In April 2019, a friend and I visited the grave of Lin Zhao in Suzhou, China to pay respect to one of history’s bravest defenders of intellectual freedom. Scanning a hill dotted with around 300 gravestones, we saw three CCTV cameras trained on one spot and climbed to it. My friend snapped…
BY HANK REICHMAN At the biennial membership meeting last June the AAUP’s governing Council voted to condemn the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and System Office for multiple violations of widely accepted standards of shared governance and academic freedom and for a sustained climate of institutional racism. The vote came after publication of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN During the recent landmark strike by some 48,000 graduate student employees in the University of California system, many Senate (tenure-track) faculty members chose to honor picket lines in various ways. Such sympathy actions are legal, but employers are entitled under the law to dock the pay of anyone who does not…
BY DAVE NALBONE On December 10, 2022, during a morning commencement exercise, Purdue University Northwest chancellor Tom Keon, in an apparent effort to dovetail on the humor of the commencement speaker who gave examples of the made-up language he used to entertain his grandchildren, offered his “Asian version” . . . to stunningly bad effect.…