BY THE AAUP DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH Today we issued a report on data from the first national survey about shared governance in two decades. It follows and complements our recently released Special Report: COVID-19 and Academic Governance, which is the report of an investigation into a number of instances in which governing boards and administrations opportunistically…
BY JOHN K. WILSON A Yahoo/YouGov poll last week (May 24-26, 2021) showed a notable result: 39% of Americans think “political correctness” is “a very big problem,” far more than the 32% who say that Covid-19 is “a very big problem.” This was the response even though Covid-19 is still killing 3,500 Americans every week…
BY JENNIFER RUTH The easiest way to attract eyeballs to a story about academia is to say that the sky is falling on academic freedom. But is this the most accurate way to frame what’s currently happening in higher education? In “Academic Freedom Is on the Ropes,” his recent article in The Chronicle of Higher…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement in support of fired Associated Press reporter Emily Wilder (Stanford ’20), signed by over 500 Stanford University students, faculty, staff and alums, was published May 24 in the Stanford Daily. A link to the petition form is here. To see the full list of signatories go here. As…
BY SHARON BASKIND-WING For-profit colleges are not deserving of your tax dollars. By now, most of us have heard of the many controversies surrounding these for-profit institutions: that they don’t deliver on employment promises, have poorly qualified faculty, are overpriced, spend too much on a racist recruitment process, and create more debt than their graduates…
BY MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ AND MICHAEL DECESARE Today, we released the report of an investigation into the crisis in academic governance that has occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigating committee, of which we are co-chairs, was charged with reaching findings on whether and to what extent there were departures at eight institutions…
BY HANK REICHMAN Apparently it was all a hoax. Two months ago Boise State University suspended 52 class sections of a required general education class with some 1300 students in what John Wilson on this blog called “one of the largest attacks on academic freedom in American history.” The move came in response to an…
BY MILES D. MAYER I recently spoke with students and colleagues at Doane University regarding failing leadership in higher education. After many spirited discussions, the conclusion was that in higher education, as in the corporate world, some leaders are taking advantage of the times, making decisions that would otherwise call for discussion and approval of…
BY JYOTSNA KAPUR AND NEEPA MAJUMDAR Words fail, as everyday India sinks to new depths of cruelty, injustice, and sheer apathy under the Modi administration. India counts today for almost one-third of the deaths from COVID-19, with people reduced to frantically chasing after a cylinder of oxygen, dying because they failed to get to a…
BY JENNIFER RUTH UNC-CH Board of Trustees’ decision to deny Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure over the explicit recommendation of the university’s faculty and administration dramatically illustrates the danger of giving Boards authority over academic hiring. (They offered her a five year position, with the possibility of a tenure review during that period.) In…