BY MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ AND MICHAEL DECESARE Today, we released the report of an investigation into the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigating committee, of which we are co-chairs, was charged with reaching findings on whether and to what extent there were departures at eight institutions…
BY HANK REICHMAN Apparently it was all a hoax. Two months ago Boise State University suspended 52 class sections of a required general education class with some 1300 students in what John Wilson on this blog called “one of the largest attacks on academic freedom in American history.” The move came in response to an…
BY MILES D. MAYER I recently spoke with students and colleagues at Doane University regarding failing leadership in higher education. After many spirited discussions, the conclusion was that in higher education, as in the corporate world, some leaders are taking advantage of the times, making decisions that would otherwise call for discussion and approval of…
BY JYOTSNA KAPUR AND NEEPA MAJUMDAR Words fail, as everyday India sinks to new depths of cruelty, injustice, and sheer apathy under the Modi administration. India counts today for almost one-third of the deaths from COVID-19, with people reduced to frantically chasing after a cylinder of oxygen, dying because they failed to get to a…
BY JENNIFER RUTH UNC-CH Board of Trustees’ decision to deny Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure over the explicit recommendation of the university’s faculty and administration dramatically illustrates the danger of giving Boards authority over academic hiring. (They offered her a five year position, with the possibility of a tenure review during that period.) In…
BY JENNIFER RUTH If you haven’t yet read Silke-Maria Weineck’s May 20 article in the Chronicle, “The Tenure Denial of Nikole Hannah-Jones is Craven and Dangerous,” please go do so. The University of Michigan professor of German and comparative literature minces no words, as her first two sentences make immediately clear: The news that the University…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today I was on a Zoom call with someone who only half-jokingly referred to the periodical Teen Vogue as the country’s leading socialist publication. While the magazine still focuses on “fashion, beauty, and entertainment news for teens,” its coverage of politics–and of higher education–has been remarkable. Take, for example, this piece published…
BY UNC HUSSMAN FACULTY As Hussman School of Journalism and Media faculty, we are stunned at the failure to award tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” winner and UNC-Chapel Hill 2019 Distinguished Alumna recently inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. This was reported…
BY HANK REICHMAN In the current issue of Academe magazine I reviewed a new book, Free City! The Fight for San Francisco’s City College and Education for All. It’s a terrific book, which details the five-year fight to save the college from an over-aggressive accrediting agency and expand access. I had previously posted frequently about…
BY JOHN K. WILSON North Dakota has approved a new law to banish abortion rights advocates from public colleges in an extraordinary assault on academic freedom that violates the First Amendment. On May 7, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum made a line-item veto of SB 2030. Gov. Burgum did make a partial veto of the…