BY AN ANONYMOUS SAINT CATHERINE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR Saint Catherine University sits on an idyllic green bluff in a serene part of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It’s not too far from the Mississippi River. When it’s hushed, you can hear the faint sounds of a barge horn as it slowly heads down to New Orleans. It’s the…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE University of Florida administrators have created a slideshow to help faculty understand the implications of the state’s new law, House Bill 7, also known as the Stop WOKE Act. One slide says, “At its core, the bill’s message is: ‘No one likes to be told what to think. And that includes students.’…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On May 23, the Princeton Board of Trustees voted to fire tenured professor Joshua Katz on the recommendation of a dean and the president, and with the approval of a faculty committee. Katz’s defenders claim that he is being persecuted for his extramural utterances calling a black student group a “terrorist…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On March 16, 2021, Boise State University ordered the suspension of fifty-five classes enrolling more than 1,299 students in its required course, UF 200: Foundations of Ethics & Diversity. The mass suspension lasted for eight days, and it is one of the largest targeted suspensions of a course in the history…
BY WISCONSIN CONFERENCE OF THE AAUP On Monday, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Jennifer Mnookin as the next chancellor of UW–Madison. Within hours, many leading Wisconsin Republicans—both elected officials and candidates for statewide office—issued nearly identical statements of opposition to her appointment. We write to condemn these statements…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE Today, we released the 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices, the first survey of its kind since 2004. The findings offer a snapshot of prevailing tenure practices and policies at four-year institutions with tenure systems. Among those findings, the survey found that tenure is highly prevalent throughout US higher education, with 87 percent…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In “Academic Freedom: A Pilot Study of Faculty Views,” published in the collection Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? (2015), Jonathan R. Cole, Stephen Cole, and Christopher C. Weiss suggest that “an erosion of the norms of academic freedom and free inquiry has taken place at American universities and colleges.” They posit two…
BY HANK REICHMAN The American Library Association (ALA) and a coalition of more than 25 groups have come together in support of the association’s Unite Against Book Bans campaign to raise awareness about the recent rise in book challenges in public libraries and schools, the association announced on Monday. “This is a dangerous time for…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Since the release last week of the report by the AAUP’s Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina system, UNC administrators have responded to the charge that, as the report puts it, the UNC system is “in trouble.” Unsurprisingly, responses from university officials…
BY ANDREW TONKOVICH It’s hard to find a better-funded speech rights outfit than one purchasing digital ads on the virtual front page of the New York Times. Setting aside the peculiar politics of the “libertarian-leaning” Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), its newest campaign, which I noticed in early April, is puzzling, if not…