North Carolina multimillionaire Arthur Pope has been using his wealth to influence the state’s politics and policy for years. In the May-June issue of Academe, Hassan Melehy, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, explains how Pope uses his wealth to fund foundations which push for more and more conservative influence over education. On the one hand,…
As we all know, universities around the country are in financial trouble. Many states have been cutting funding to their public universities, forcing the schools to do more with less. So it’s understandable that administrators would be on the lookout for new sources of funding—including wealthy donors. In “Fine Print, Restrictive Grants, and Academic Freedom,”…
How much influence should wealthy donors be able to buy? Kevin Kumashiro looks at the question is “When Billionaires Become Educational Experts,” in the May-June issue of Academe. Kumashiro examines the history of two groups, the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Business Roundtable, which have had outsized influence in education policy from their founding in the…
When does philanthropy cross the line? That’s the question we are looking at in the newest issue of Academe, now posted online. Over the next few days, I’ll be highlighting a few of the feature articles, but before I do, I wanted to talk about the issue as a whole, because I think it’s a particularly good…
By Leonard Hitchcock, Professor Emeritus, Idaho State University Idaho State University (ISU) is currently under sanction by the AAUP. Details of its case are available online, in one of the AAUP’s investigative reports for 2011 (pdf). My own case is essentially a footnote to that report.
Rudy Fichtenbaum, a professor at Wright State University, was elected the next president of the AAUP last month. John K. Wilson interviewed Fichtenbaum via email about his goals for the AAUP. John K. Wilson: A headline about your election on InsideHighered.com asked, “Is the AAUP about to change course?” Is it? In what direction?
In an example of terrible legislation, the Tennessee House and Senate this week approved a new law (if it’s signed by the governor) compelling public universities (and the private Vanderbilt University) to allow student groups to discriminate against students based on religious beliefs and private behavior. It’s an attack on the religious liberty of individuals,…
It used to be that a Republican presidential candidate speaking at Liberty University was controversial because of the institution’s repressive, far-right-wing politics. Now, the controversy goes the other way. Mitt Romney is being attacked by students at Liberty University because he has been invited to be this year’s commencement speaker. That’s controversial because Romney is…
The following is a guest post by Michael DeCesare, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Merrimack College. “Tenured Professor Is Placed on Leave After Showing a Film About Pornography” was one of the headlines screeching across the April 20 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The case…
On the blog of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), its longtime president Anne Neal writes about the election of Rudy Fichtenbaum as the new president of the AAUP. Her alarmist rhetoric not only distorts what the AAUP does today, but fundamentally rewrites the history of the AAUP in a completely misleading way.…