BY EVA CHERNIAVSKY As we enter a fourth decade of life in the neoliberal university, where permanent austerity rules everywhere except in the swelling ranks of upper administration; where the pretense of shared governance has all but collapsed; where tenure lines are vanishing (particularly in the humanities and social sciences), and the faculty continues to…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF AND S. ANI MUKHERJI We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 12 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. As coeditors, we agreed on the theme for the volume, “Practices of Academic Freedom in Times of Austerity,” late last summer—a time of cascading loss and despair, but also of inspiring…
BY JONATHAN FEINGOLD Earlier this month, President Biden delivered the COVID-19 speech we needed. As the Delta variant surges, Biden offered concrete policy and commanding leadership. He announced wide-ranging initiatives to maximize vaccinations, curb transmission, and protect our kids. He was also unifying but blunt, calling out “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY It’s been a long week here in Georgia. I write at the end of weeklong, statewide protests about our university system’s poor COVID-19 policies. You might have seen media coverage splashed across many platforms and networks. It’s also been a long month here as our hospitals are overrun and our campuses saw…
BY RUDY FICHTENBAUM Melvyn Goldfinger, who was associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology, and physiology at Wright State University, died on September 17 at the age of seventy-four. Mel Goldfinger was a champion for academic freedom, shared governance, and the economic security of the faculty–the three bedrock principles of the AAUP. It was Mel, along…
BY AUDREY TRUSCHKE The following are remarks made at a virtual congressional briefing on “Hindu Supremacists attacks on Academic Freedom,” sponsored by a coalition of eighteen organizations in the United States on September 8, 2021. The remarks have been lightly edited for style and updated with a postscript on a recent academic conference. Hindu nationalism…
BY CATHERINE M. YOUNG Follow the foibles of Claire Park, a Walt Whitman expert and part-time instructor at a small liberal arts college and large public university as she looks ahead to the fall semester and wonders how she will pay her November and December rent if her third class is canceled because not enough…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a statement issued today, September 17, by the Council of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT). For background on this case see this previous post and CAUT’s statement imposing censure. On April 22, the Council of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) took…
BY PRANAV JANI 1984 meets Professor Umbridge. That’s what came to my mind when I heard of two bills currently being debated in the Ohio legislature, HB 322 and 327. Seeking to define a category of “divisive concepts” that Ohio children and adult students in college need to be protected from, these bills legitimize the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday, Kent Syverud, Chancellor and President of Syracuse University, and David Van Slyke, Dean of that institution’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, issued a statement in response to controversy that had emerged around a faculty member’s comments about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The faculty member, a tenure-track assistant…