BY JENNIFER RUTH Back in November 2020, I posted “What Have We Learned? Lessons from the Last Decade.” I claimed it was the first in a series but I never followed through. I did have a set of issues that I intended to devote a post each to. I wanted to discuss the way “both…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Perhaps fittingly for our time, it is marked by the revelation that on January 10, by a 10-0 vote, the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board removed from the middle school curriculum Maus, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, which tells the…
BY DEBORAH BELL, SUSAN DENNISON, SPOMA JOVANOVIC, JESSICA NAVARRO, AND JONATHAN TUDGE As colleges and universities address myriad crises—including enrollment declines, operating changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions about the value of a college degree, and the need to mitigate racial tensions on campus—higher education budgets have come under increasing scrutiny, and talk…
BY JOSEPH G. RAMSEY Welcome back to school, faculty—and grad student teachers, too! Wondering how much your teaching labor is subsidizing the rest of your university (in other words: your basic rate of exploitation)? Try this fun back-to-school activity! Locate your school’s per course student tuition rate. (At my public university, in-state tuition per 3…
BY JOHN K. WILSON January 23, 2022 marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in what may be the most important legal case protecting academic freedom: Keyishian v. Board of Regents. The poetic words of Justice William Brennan’s majority decision have echoed through our legal system and become a fundamental part of…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In recent times, university presidents and boards of trustees have not exactly covered themselves in glory. Last week’s news that University of Michigan president Mark Schlissel had engaged in a hypocritical and inappropriate relationship was only the latest example of ignominious behavior on the part of a university leader. Schlissel was fired…
BY STEVEN LUBET This essay was originally published on SAGE’s online network for social scientists, Social Science Space, and is republished with their permission. The right-wing Heritage Foundation has accused university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices of spreading anti-Semitism on campuses, but its recently issued report does not back up the claim. Although Heritage touts…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In a speech in Georgia on Tuesday, President Biden called voter suppression and election subversion “Jim Crow 2.0.” Criticism of the comparison was swift. The “worst hyperbole to date,” an op-ed in Boston Herald called it. Republican Senator Tim Scott* of South Carolina took to the floor to express his irritation and…
BY HARVEY J. GRAFF In my recent Washington Monthly essay, “The Banality of University Slogans,” I observed that “whether it’s ad campaigns for football season, gauzy reports from the provost, or bombast from the school’s president, higher education abounds with empty rhetoric.” In “Per Aspera ad Astra” Academe Blog contributing editor Hank Reichman shared and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Given the case’s high importance, a U.S. District Court judge says he hopes to issue an order by January 24 on a suit filed by a group of University of Florida professors to invalidate the school’s conflict of interest policy as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech. “This is on the…