BY ERIC J. WEINER Although Lisa Siraganian’s recent article ”Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity” includes important considerations for the heterodox academic community, her theses do more to distort the intentions and purposes of heterodoxical teaching and learning than to illuminate its potential conflicts and contradictions. Siraganian’s general critique of “viewpoint diversity” is that it is…
BY AMY HAGOPIAN Public health professionals are charged with responding to humanitarian crises. When hospitals are bombed, when children are deliberately starved, when doctors are assassinated, we’re supposed to speak up. That’s the job. Last week, I was informed my American Public Health Association membership has been revoked, my annual meeting registration cancelled, and I…
The Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741 are delighted to announce their Fall 2025 series, “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Harassment, and Misinformation in U.S. Higher Education.” This series of five webinars from October to December brings together educators, activists, and organizations representing them to fight back against the bad-faith misuse of the…
BY HANK REICHMAN The image above is from an AI video that the GREAT (and demented) LEADER himself posted to social media. It reminded me of an historical analogy I’ve been mulling over since I first saw videos of masked ICE thugs rampaging through neighborhoods, courthouses, and downtown squares, chasing down immigrants (documented or not)…
BY LAURA GOLDBLATT, MELISSA LEVY, AND DAN SEGAL With scant exceptions, US colleges and universities have a board of trustees that is the institution’s highest decision-making or governance body. In response to the current widespread assault on academic freedom, rights of speech and assembly on campus, and the role of campus governance, the Academic Council…
BY THE AAUP-PENN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE We were alarmed to read reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so would jeopardize federal funding. When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact…
BY JOHN WARNER AND ANNA FEDER The following is a repost of a piece that originally appeared on “Academic Freedom on the Line,” a Substack run by Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom fellow John Warner. The past few weeks have seen a volume of violations of academic freedom not seen since the Red…
BY WILLIAM MATTHEW MCCARTER For more than fifty years, I’ve been learning. For more than twenty years, I’ve been teaching. If at this stage I can’t profess something worth hearing, then I ought to quit and sell insurance. Students don’t pay for PowerPoints or rubrics. They pay for professors who profess. The word itself comes…
BY IAN FINSETH The following is an imaginary communiqué from a fictitious administrator of an invented university to its faculty. It is satire (one hopes). Dear colleagues: Here at the University of the Southern Upper Midwest, we know that our customers don’t pay tuition for such woo-woo things like expanding their intellectual horizons, developing a…
BY DALE E. MILLER In “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” Professor Lisa Siraganian throws down a gauntlet. After offering “seven theses against viewpoint diversity in any of its guises,” she writes that “if viewpoint diversity means committing oneself to a robust debate about truth and values, then the movement should be open to responding to…