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…
BY MARK JAMES Two days after news broke that the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina voted to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism without the protections of tenure, Inside Higher Ed published my article in which I described being called into a meeting because a parent had…
BY CAROLYN BETENSKY Faculty members who would have been Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones’s colleagues at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina have written a powerful statement voicing support for her decision not to accept the tenured position she was offered last week at their school. After a demeaning and…
BY MIMI V. CHAPMAN The following letter was sent by University of North Carolina faculty chair Mimi V. Chapman to the faculty. July 1, 2021 Dear Carolina Community: At last, a difficult chapter has come to a conclusion. Yesterday, the UNC Board of Trustees met to consider Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tenure dossier and then voted to grant…
BY SYDNEY FREEMAN, JR., AND DEBORAH THORNE Results from student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are biased; the evidence is irrefutable. Students more harshly assess female instructors and instructors of color. Despite that, in the professional lives of instructors, SETs are extremely consequential—they are used to guide very high stakes personnel decisions such as whether one…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The tenured appointment of Nikole Hannah-Jones was approved by the University of North Carolina trustees a few minutes ago. This is a victory for academic freedom and for shared governance. The academic freedom victory is about the importance of tenure to academic freedom. Some people argued that Hannah-Jones didn’t need tenure,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Greg Lukianoff, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and three co-authors have written a piece, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” discussing the avalanche of proposed and, in some cases, already enacted legislation governing classroom instruction in both higher ed and…