BY TWO TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS The news has been inundated with reports of relentless attacks on intellectual freedom and attacks on libraries. Just last week a blog detailed the many ways in which books and information are being challenged in schools and in public service sectors. Less well-reported, however, is the ongoing attack on…
BY JEFFREY C. ISAAC Over 1,700 of the roughly 2,400 graduate student workers at Indiana University have signed union cards affiliating with the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition with the United Electrical Workers union. The Indiana University administration has refused to recognize or even to meet with coalition leaders. And after years of seeking recognition, the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH When I was a junior faculty member, one of my senior colleagues invited me to a regular happy hour he attended with Portland State’s top administrators. The man who was the provost at the time was there, as well as a head HR person, a legal affairs person, the director of facilities,…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS It is not only Colorado’s thousands of higher education faculty who stand to benefit through collective bargaining, but also Colorado’s hundreds of thousands of college students, their parents, and our state’s 5.7 million taxpayers. Why? Because when employers and employees make decisions together through collective bargaining, those negotiations require disclosure of financial…
BY HANK REICHMAN Four journalists associated with an independent Moscow student magazine were sentenced April 12 to two years’ “corrective labor” for creating and posting an online video in which they defended young Russians’ freedom of assembly. Armen Aramyan, Natasha Tyshkevich, Alla Gutnikova and Volodya Metelkin, participants in the editorial collective of the journal DOXA,…
BY MARTHA MCCAUGHEY At its February 25 meeting, the Wyoming Senate passed a budget amendment to end funding for the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) program and the activities associated with GWS. The Senate approved the amendment, 16–14, but it did not make it onto the House floor for consideration. The provision’s…
BY REBECCA T. ALPERT The following remarks were delivered as part of an online forum on “The Assault on Academic Freedom” sponsored by Temple University April 7. I want to focus today on my own experience of academic freedom in two very different (but related) locations: in and also beyond the classroom. Academic freedom in…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In February, historian Ellen Schrecker and I called upon faculty to use the power we possess through shared governance to fight the education gag orders sweeping the country. In January, I commented here on how institutions in the south hesitate to pass resolutions out of fear of “poking the bear.” I am…
BY MARLEEN S. BARR I could only look at the Will Smith meltdown from the point of view of that earlier Will, because Shakespeare has so many characters who precipitate a steep and stunning downfall: Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Shylock. The title of Smith’s movie, in which he plays the father of Venus and Serena…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following are excerpts from a special report, The State of America’s Libraries, released today by the American Library Association. Librarians have always been on the front lines in the fight to protect the freedom to read. But in 2021, libraries found themselves at the center of attacks orchestrated by conservative…