On Monday, Eureka (IL) high school teacher Rhett Felix was suspended for showing segments from “The Daily Show” in his government and law class. It’s a reminder of how little freedom K-12 teachers have in America, and how easily a right-wing crusade can silence freedom in the classroom.
In the new issue of Academe, Elizabeth Capaldi, executive vice president and provost at Arizona State University, writes about how her university has handled steep cuts in state funding. She says that while some university activities–for example, a named fund, building, or chair–are supported by dedicated funds, “the state and the students themselves are the…
I can’t quite decide what I find more repulsive: Yale University’s decision to ban “Sex Week” from campus, or the Yale Daily News’ approval of this decision as defending “free speech.” In an astonishing act of repression and lack of respect for student rights, Yale president Richard Levin has banned a student group from holding…
Over 600 University of California at Berkeley faculty have signed this letter in protest of the police violence against the Occupy Cal demonstration: November 11, 2011 Open Letter to Chancellor Birgeneau, the UC Berkeley administration, and the UC Regents: We, the undersigned faculty, lecturers, and graduate student assistants—all of whom teach at Berkeley and are…
This week, more than three million Ohioans went to the polls to vote on a measure that would preserve public employee collective bargaining rights. Those rights were under attack from the state’s governor, John Kasich, who spearheaded the highly controversial Senate Bill 5, which would have essentially ended public employee unions, earlier this year. Supporters…
The Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Faculty Association issued this announcement: The faculty strike at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is over. The SIUC Faculty Association’s Departmental Representative Council (DRC) voted tonight to end the strike after it was presented with a revised administrative proposal will form the basis of a tentative agreement to be…
From the Colorado AAUP: The Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors has conducted an investigation into the University of Colorado’s dismissals of two members of its faculty. Phil Mitchell and Ward Churchill represent different sides of the same coin. One is a fundamentalist Christian identified with the political right wing; the other…
Diana Vallera is a Fine Artist and Photography Instructor at Columbia College of Chicago, and President of the Part-Time Faculty Union. In this essay based on a talk given last month at the Illinois AAUP meeting, Vallera analyzes Columbia College of Chicago (which has no connection to Columbia University), and the approach of the administration…
Cary Nelson has taken a lot of criticism for defending the free speech of Julio Pino, a Kent State professor who said “Death to Israel” to an Israeli speaker at an extracurricular event on campus. At Minding the Campus, K.C. Johnson attacks Nelson for stating, “Calling out a political slogan during a question period falls…
From the AAUP website: Faculty at Cincinnati State have a new contract. “During the past few months of negotiation, the administration positions became increasingly extreme and the possibility of reaching meaningful, economically sound compromises seemed unlikely,” Cincinnati State AAUP past president Pam Ecker said in a statement. “Faculty members agreed to accept this contract resolution…