BY JOHN K. WILSON John K. Wilson interviewed Bradford Vivian, author of Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press), by email for Academe Blog. To learn more about Vivian’s book, you can listen to interviews with him on the podcasts Democracy Works and Politics Is Everything. John…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN I previously posted this in 2016. The following was written by Martin Luther King, Jr. and first published in the February 1947 edition of the Morehouse College Student Newspaper. King was 18 years old. As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find…
BY JENNIFER RUTH I don’t think I need to rehearse the incident and its very unjust consequences for one adjunct professor. It’s all over the news, both in higher ed and mainstream outlets. “Our response to the classroom event does not disregard or minimize the importance of academic freedom,” said Hamline University president Fayneese Miller…
BY RODOLFO ROSALES Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship recipients have formed a community in which we can share the products of our knowledge, our talents, our research, and our work in the arts, humanities, and sciences—along with many other intellectual accomplishments across the disciplines that have been significant in establishing our footprint in the history of…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “Where woke goes to die.” Let’s call this phrase what it is: fascist propaganda. In “The Collapse of Radical Reconstruction,” the first episode of Princeton professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s podcast “History is Us,” Le Moyne College professor Douglas Egerton says, “Reconstruction did not fail. Reconstruction was killed.” What does “where woke…
POSTED BY THE AAUP Volume 14: Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom The 2023 issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom seeks original articles that investigate the links between landscapes of social power and the historical development and contemporary status of academic freedom. For over a century, the AAUP has defended the profession against attacks…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Adam Kissel has written an article in the Federalist titled “The Smart Lawmaker’s Guide To Writing Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws That Will Stand Up In Court.” As scary as that headline is, the full essay is much more alarming in its open advocacy of repression. Kissel’s piece was in response to…
BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER Once upon a time, the administration of a sleepy state university proposed a new budget, offering the rationale that the new budget would “incentivize” departments and promote “entrepreneurial” conduct—couching it in terms of “decentralized” operations and rewarding colleges for increases in their student full-time equivalent enrollments. Three years into the proposed experiment…
BY ALAN SINGER Academic freedom is the most sacred tradition in American universities. Academic freedom generally ensures that “both faculty members and students can engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation” and “establishes a faculty member’s right to remain true to his or her pedagogical philosophy and intellectual commitments.” Although K–12 teachers…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The strike continues with no end in sight. Although there have been tentative agreements concerning post-docs and academic researchers, in the academic student employee (ASE) and student researcher units, the parties appear to remain well apart on the fundamental economic issues. This distance is most easily seen in the ASE category: although…