BY IRENE MULVEY At this time, when our nation is confronting deep-rooted racial inequity and having honest and long-overdue conversations about our history, legislators in a number of states have moved to shut down the conversation by restricting teaching about oppression, race, and gender. The details vary, but generally the bills prohibit teaching or training…
BY JOHN K. WILSON This week is the 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Conference, online June 14-18, 2021, with events at 1pm and 3pm ET. Registration for the events is free, but only open to members of the AAUP. If you’re not a member of the AAUP, these are good reasons to join now. The AAUP’s…
BY AUDREY TRUSCHKE In early March 2021, I awoke to a social media barrage of misogynist and bigoted slurs, unhinged accusations, and threats to hurt me and my family. For a few days, I thought little about this. Since 2015, I have suffered online harassment from those who dislike my scholarship, especially a branch of…
BY JOHN K. WILSON In a June 9 essay for the Washington Post, Stanford professor Emily Levine attacked the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles as a “mistake” for failing to offer a “positive vision” of academic freedom. As the subhead for her essay puts it, “Linking academic freedom to tenure has led to an impoverished…
BY MATTHEW FINKIN The following is a remembrance by Matthew Finkin of Marty Lapidus, who died on May 27 at the age of eighty. It was 1968. I was the Association’s staff counsel in Washington, DC. Marty Lapidus was a staff assistant to the president of TIAA in New York City. The AAUP represented the…
BY JOHN K. WILSON I interviewed Jonathan Rauch, the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Institution Press, June 2021) via email about his new book. Here are some upcoming online events with Jonathan Rauch about The Constitution of Knowledge: FIRE Faculty Network, June 8, 4pm ET Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 9,…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Former AAUP president Cary Nelson wrote an essay for Inside Higher Ed last week, arguing that departments issuing statements critical of the Israeli government are violating academic freedom and must be silenced: A department is an administrative entity, an arm of the university. Academic and professional standards for departments exist, such…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Cairn University has announced the elimination of the School of Social Work, prompting the following letter from the National Association of Social Workers: The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its Pennsylvania Chapter have grave concerns about Cairn University’s sudden dismantling of its social work program because of University President…
BY HASSAN MELEHY By now, the decision by the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to refuse a tenured professorship to Nikole Hannah-Jones is a well-known story. One trustee, speaking anonymously, made clear that the motive was “politics.” In North Carolina we’re familiar with the right-wing policymaking that governs us: one of its major sources is…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted to this blog a statement from Stanford University students, faculty and alums that called out the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) for instigating the widely publicized and controversial firing of a recent Stanford graduate by the Associated Press because of social media posts she had made that were pro-Palestinian. …