BY DANA SAJDI Part of my choosing to be a premodern historian is precisely to escape the reality of having been born and raised until adolescence in Nablus, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As a schoolgirl, it was a daily routine for me to carry in my lunch tiffin an onion, the root vegetable considered…
The AAUP signed the below declaration of support for resistance to political attacks on academic freedom at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul from BOYUT, the community of Boğaziçi University alumni living outside of Turkey. They write:“The Erdogan government has been intervening in the institutional autonomy of Bogazici University since Jan. 1, 2021, in an attempt to…
BY HANK REICHMAN Human affairs are filled with contradiction. “Cognitive dissonance,” the mental stress associated with holding two opposing views at the same time, is far from uncommon. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously declared, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still…
BY HANK REICHMAN The California Supreme Court declined this week to stay an injunction that requires the University of California at Berkeley to freeze enrollment at Fall 2020 levels while a lawsuit against the university filed by a resident group proceeds. The suit, filed under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), charges that the university…
BY JESSICA WINEGAR Do you know that photo of the older woman protestor holding a sign that says “I Can’t Believe I Still Have to Protest this S**t?” Now that I just turned fifty and have spent three decades in the academy, I think of that image frequently when attending academic talks. Back in grad…
BY HANK REICHMAN Despite ongoing and lively debate among scholars of the region about the nature and histories of Russian and Ukrainian nationalism, the origins and causes of the current crisis, and the appropriate role for the US and its allies in the conflict, a remarkable unanimity has emerged among scholarly organizations in Russian and…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The letter below, which has so far attracted over 700 signatures, a veritable who’s-who of Jewish and Israel Studies, comes in response to the University of Washington placing its five-year-old Israel Studies Program on hold after a major donor, angry about a professor’s criticism of Israel, took her money back. Becky…
BY HANK REICHMAN The Delhi High Court today ordered Twitter to take down within 48 hours certain tweets by Rutgers University historian Audrey Truschke, days after she and other scholars were barred by the court from publishing a letter accusing an Indian popular historian of plagiarism. On Tuesday. a large group of scholars had issued…
BY DALE E. MILLER Several states have taken or are considering measures to prohibit the teaching of “divisive concepts.” In my state, Virginia, new governor Glenn Younkin immediately issued Executive Order Number One (E.O. 1), “Ending the Use of Inherently Divisive Concepts, Including Critical Race Theory, and Restoring Excellence in K–12 Public Education in the…
BY JENNIFER RUTH AND EDDIE R. COLE When the entire Black delegation of the Mississippi State Senate walked out to protest the vote on banning critical race theory on January 21, I thought about UCLA professor Eddie R. Cole’s 2020 book The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom. “The people…