BY TAYLOR SWAAK Hi, everyone! I’m a reporter with the Chronicle of Higher Education covering technology and innovation. I’m in the midst of a newsroom report (see past examples here) on how colleges can thoughtfully, safely, and effectively partner with outside companies for services related to academic and student support. The broad umbrella of contracted services may…
BY HANK REICHMAN “We are deeply concerned that the crisis of the American university–the decline of tenure-track jobs and universities’ eroding commitment to the humanities and social sciences–has created a structural crisis for scholarship.” So write the editors of the Journal of the Early Republic, published by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN For academic freedom’s advocates, there is much to like about the recent federal court ruling prohibiting Florida’s board of governors from enforcing the Individual Freedom Act. Especially gratifying are the rhetorical tropes Judge Mark Walker deploys in justifying this preliminary injunction. When the legislature adopted what Governor Ron DeSantis dubbed the…
BY TALIA SCHAFFER, SETH KAHN, RACHEL SAGNER BUURMA, AND CAROLYN BETENSKY Over the past few weeks, a slew of law schools have announced that they will no longer participate in the US News and World Report’s rankings because of the publication’s problematic methodology and the effects of their rankings. This spate of denunciations follows on…
BY HARVEY J. GRAFF In my new Journal of Academic Freedom article, “The Nondebate about Critical Race Theory and Our American Moment,” I discuss battles over the past in the context of the US reckoning with truth, reconciliation, collective knowledge, and the pursuit of an inclusive, equitable democracy. These battles at the intersection of past,…
BY FRANÇOIS FURSTENBERG I have a small but persistent fantasy about academic life, about an alternate review and promotion system for university faculty. Here’s what I imagine . . . You were lucky to be hired as an assistant professor into a tenure-track job. Now six years later, you’re coming up for tenure. You’d like…
BY NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER On September 13, the Notre Dame of Maryland University (Baltimore, MD) community was notified by email of the decision of its board of trustees to admit male undergraduates to its women’s college. A task force of the board worked privately for a year. Faculty at NDMU have…
BY LORI LATRICE MARTIN Nearly two and a half years ago, the world watched as George Floyd, a human being, had his life snuffed out by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Officer Chauvin applied pressure to George Floyd’s neck while other officers made sure that he could not move, and another made sure no bystanders…
POSTED BY THE AAUP We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 13 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Our fall 2021 call for papers, “Memory Laws or Gag Laws? Disinformation Meets Academic Freedom,” invited scholarly responses to the wave of legislation seeking to ban or restrict teaching about race and racism. As…
BY JOHN K. WILSON A conference on academic freedom being held this weekend at Stanford has spurred controversy over its perceived conservative bias and closed format. A group of more than fifty Stanford academics signed “A Closed Conference on Academic Freedom is a Contradiction,” a statement denouncing the conference for its lack of public access.…