BY JENNIFER RUTH The far right has made critical race theory (CRT) one of the most polarizing issues in a deeply polarized country. And this is precisely what the architect of the anti-CRT media campaign Christopher Rufo intended. In March, he tweeted: We have successfully frozen their brand—’critical race theory’—into the public conversation and…
BY TALIA SCHAFFER Several years ago, I witnessed Malcolm Gladwell fearlessly tell a Cambridge audience that nobody should give a cent to Harvard. Whenever I read someone criticizing Gladwell’s tendency to cherry-pick data, I remember that moment. Two of Gladwell’s recent “Revisionist History” podcast episodes (season 6, episodes 2 and 3) do reveal his characteristic…
BY HANK REICHMAN Have you been compelled to sit through a class that made you, well, uncomfortable? Was it painful to learn there was once chattel slavery right here in the good ol’ US of A? Did you suffer heart palpitations upon being told that race had something to do with it? And what about…
BY RAFAEL JAIME As colleges and universities prepare to reopen in the fall, academic workers across the country are making it clear they are not interested in returning to business as usual. The years-long crisis underscored the extent to which our current higher education system has lost sight of its core mission to educate future…
BY ALEX SMALL I recently read Tom Ginsburg’s article “How to Truly Protect Academic Freedom” with sympathetic disagreement. I share his concern over the many high-profile incidents that he cites, and I have lamented many of them with friends. I am an avid consumer (even tester?) of academic freedom, lodging dissents in my university’s academic…
BY HANK REICHMAN The headline on Inside Higher Ed was provocative, if not downright inflammatory: “AAUP vs. FIRE.” But rather than the knockdown drag-out contest between two national organizations celebrated for their defense of intellectual freedom implied by the headline, the article that followed offered something much more modest. The AAUP chapter at the University…
BY KELLI PYRON ALVAREZ In June, a colleague who did not attend my University of Oklahoma workshop “Anti-Racist Rhetoric & Pedagogies” decided to download the video and send it to off-campus parties. I cannot speak to his intent, but the result was that several organizations, including FIRE, misinterpreted and misconstrued the goal and purpose of…
BY JAY M. SMITH At UNC–Chapel Hill, one of the biggest frustrations arising from the entire Nikole Hannah-Jones affair has been the obstinate refusal of UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin to tell the campus community what happened and why. Thanks to the candid statement Hannah-Jones released after deciding to refuse UNC’s job…
BY MICHAEL GIVEL At many universities across the United States, a modern addition to central administrations has been some type of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program or office. At the University of Oklahoma (OU), where I am a professor of political science, our DEI program is known as the Office of Diversity, Equity,…
BY JULIE A. WARD I was born in Oklahoma, and graduated from high school and college in this state. I am a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. And I am an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. But even with my deep connections to this place, I often feel unwelcome in the…