BY HANK REICHMAN A week after non-tenure-track lecturers at the University of California held rallies at UC campuses statewide in support of their union, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT), there are signs that at long last the university’s negotiators are being forced to respond to these colleagues’ demands. Thanks to pressure from faculty,…
BY MARK DUCHARME AND MELINDA MYRICK For educators in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the word “equity” is a familiar buzzword. Though it’s an admirable goal, and one we very much share, the problem is that it can seem like empty rhetoric— or worse, a cynical marketing ploy— in light of actual labor practices…
BY ALICE BROWN Read the first in the series, “Who Cares about Small Colleges?” COVID-19 has reduced the autonomy faculty once had to choose their course content and teaching methods. Colleges across the country have reduced retirement benefits, sabbaticals, and tenure appointments to help balance budgets. Faculty are told whether to teach in person or…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE In recent years, right-wing lawmakers have mounted attacks on tenure in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky. These efforts have been based on the claim that tenure unduly protects liberal professors who squelch the voices of conservative students. Tenure has also been cited as an obstacle to getting rid of underperforming faculty in…
BY HANK REICHMAN A Texas school superintendent has now apologized after one of his top officials advised teachers that, if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom library, they should give students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective. Nevertheless, the assault on classroom and school libraries in Texas and elsewhere,…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE On October 14, the AAUP released its third report on data collected from this year’s Shared Governance Survey as part of a special issue of Academe dedicated to governance. This report focuses on responses to questions about the composition of senates and similar faculty governance bodies and the conduct of presidential searches, as well as findings…
BY JENNIFER RUTH We at Academe blog have a number of posts discussing the legislation attempting to restrict curricula teaching race and gender justice and critical race theory. See here, here, here, and here. “This is the new McCarthyism,” historian Ellen Schrecker has written. The AAUP itself has put out a number of statements criticizing…
BY THE AAUP Fall 2021 | Vol. 107, No. 4 The fall 2021 issue of Academe surveys the present state of academic governance. It includes a new report on findings of the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Survey, firsthand accounts of governance struggles on campuses around the country, and a pair of articles that confront the threat posed…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today all eyes in higher education are on Georgia, where the state Board of Regents has voted to all but eliminate the protections of tenure for all faculty in that state’s public colleges and universities, thereby inviting the AAUP to make good on its pledge to investigate and, ultimately, censure that board. …
BY JASON STANLEY Yale University is a central democratic institution, a fact recognized by its tax-exempt status. It provides a forum in which society’s most difficult issues can be confronted and freely discussed. The University educator is thus tasked with presenting their students with intellectually rigorous foundational challenges to tradition; that is the role of…