Dictating Civics: How the Purdue Civics Literacy Requirement Was Imposed by Trustees and Administrators

BY DANIEL MORRIS On June 11, 2021, the Purdue Board of Trustees passed a civics literacy requirement for undergraduates despite opposition from the faculty senate. Placed in the context of what happened at the University of North Carolina in April, when, as Lindsie Rank reports, “the board of trustees refused to approve the faculty’s recommendation…

How to Institutionalize Academic Freedom

BY JOHN K. WILSON Tom Ginsburg, a professor at the University of Chicago, proposes institutionalizing academic freedom in an opinion essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education this past week: “Colleges must institutionalize the protection of academic freedom by devoting resources to training, establishing standards, and hearing complaints when norms are threatened.” According to Ginsburg,…

Trial Reveals Feds Falsely Accused Chinese-born US Professor of Espionage

BY HANK REICHMAN In November 2017 the AAUP released a report on National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, which decried “increasing restrictions on and threats to the global exchange of scientific research and the academic freedom of American scientists to interact with foreign colleagues,” especially those from China.  In 2019, the AAUP…

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The Consequences of Official Departmental Anti-Zionism

BY CARY NELSON John Wilson has recently claimed that official anti-Zionist proclamations by academic departments are protected by academic freedom. “A statement is just a statement,” his Academe Blog post concludes, “It’s not an act of oppression.” Wilson was writing in opposition to my own June 3 essay in Inside Higher Education, “Is Academic Freedom…

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Teaching about Race

BY IRENE MULVEY At this time, when our nation is confronting deep-rooted racial inequity and having honest and long-overdue conversations about our history, legislators in a number of states have moved to shut down the conversation by restricting teaching about oppression, race, and gender. The details vary, but generally the bills prohibit teaching or training…

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The Hindu Right Chokes Academic Freedom

BY AUDREY TRUSCHKE  In early March 2021, I awoke to a social media barrage of misogynist and bigoted slurs, unhinged accusations, and threats to hurt me and my family. For a few days, I thought little about this. Since 2015, I have suffered online harassment from those who dislike my scholarship, especially a branch of…

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Remembering Marty Lapidus

BY MATTHEW FINKIN The following is a remembrance by Matthew Finkin of Marty Lapidus, who died on May 27 at the age of eighty. It was 1968. I was the Association’s staff counsel in Washington, DC. Marty Lapidus was a staff assistant to the president of TIAA in New York City. The AAUP represented the…