BY RACHEL BOUVIER Act I: Collateral Damage The letter came by FedEx. Inside: A formal notification that my tenured position as an economics professor had been eliminated—the second time in a matter of months my line had been retrenched, along with fifty colleagues and entire departments. The first had been noisy and public. The second…
BY THE TEXAS CONFERENCE OF THE AAUP This week’s events are the clearest example yet: We are bargaining away Texas’s future so politicians can have material for fundraising emails and viral social media content. This week, Texas A&M University has presented the most startling example yet of the consequences of our state and federal governments’…
This blog post originally appeared on Academic Freedom on the Line, the Substack newsletter of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF). We are republishing it here with the author’s permission. BY JOHN WARNER I want to believe at this point that I am immune to shocks to the system when it comes…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY Faculty in the South Describe a Climate of Fear on Campus, Grants Cancelled, and Students Impacted, Survey Finds A major new survey of higher education faculty across the South has revealed the significant impact of federal and state political attacks on faculty work and recruitment. The survey, conducted by multiple state conferences…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “We stand determined to see that Mason—the largest public institution of higher education in Virginia with one of the most diverse student bodies in the US—remains a university of, by, and for the people.” — Bethany Letiecq, Professor in the College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University George Mason University…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “The disaster that we fear will happen to us is happening to us. Our good deans aren’t holding back the worst; they are legitimating it.” – Associate Professor of Germanic Studies Ben Robinson The IndyStar recently reported a story that contains lessons for us all about the overcompliance of administrators during this…
BY HANK REICHMAN If there’s a better examplar of the higher education administrative establishment’s failures than E. Gordon Gee, I can’t think of one. Gee, who has held more university presidencies than any other American, has cut an extraordinary path of scandal and negligence pretty much everywhere he’s been. Yet he continues not only to…
BY JENNIFER RUTH What does looking back at the fate of anti-CRT legislation teach us about the limitations of the law for saving academic freedom? If you recall, towards the end of his first administration, Donald Trump issued the Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotypes. It was part of a backlash against the…
BY JONATHAN REES Do you remember MOOCs? I realize that that question is itself cliche now, but if you do remember massive open online courses you almost certainly remember the quote about how in the future there were only going to be ten universities and that “There’s a tsunami coming.” Needless to say, there are…
BY MYIA CLARISSE WILLIAMS AND VERNON C. LINDSAY One “big beautiful bill” has introduced ugly stress responses and expanded job duties among diverse higher education practitioners. Current provisions impose additional limits on Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans. Federal loan restrictions, the loss of DEI initiatives, and other meaningful programs that impact student retention also…