BY MARYBETH GASMAN All one has to do in order to understand the depth of anxiety felt by assistant professors on the tenure track is to spend an hour on Twitter following the hashtags #academictwitter or #academicchatter. Tenure-track faculty members are feeling uncertain, stressed, overworked, and frightened of the tenure process and its unforgiving inhumanity.…
BY NATE HOLDREN Faculty members are exhausted. That’s no surprise given that we are overworked in a distressing world. I’ve begun to suspect there’s an additional factor in our exhaustion, which I call “moral distress,” and which administrators are worsening without realizing it. Several commentators have talked about medical workers facing moral injury. That’s when…
BY KEVIN HOWLEY For G. K. Professors are anxious and burned out. They’ve been pivoting. They’ve been juggling work and child care. They’ve been worried—about Covid-19, the economy, social justice, the nation’s divisive political climate. —The Chronicle of Higher Education In all of my time as a campus administrator—granted it’s only been three weeks since…
BY THE CAMPUS POLICE WORKING GROUP The following is an excerpt, with source citations removed, from the recently released report On Campus Police Forces; see also the excerpt “The Growth and Development of Campus Police.” In July 2020, the AAUP appointed a Campus Police Working Group and charged its members with drafting a report on…
BY ALEX ZUKAS Like many other university administrations across the United States, National University in San Diego, CA, is using the COVID-19 crisis as cover to enact draconian measures, some of which were mentioned on this blog in July 2020. Most recently, the university is requiring faculty to sign a liability waiver to access their…
BY EILEEN BORIS The world awoke, and tartly spoke: “Your work is all the same: Work together or work apart, Work, each of you, with all your heart— Just get into the game!” —Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Socialist and the Suffragist,” Appeal to Reason, September 28, 1912 For decades I’ve found inspiration in this call…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following press release was submitted by members of the faculty at Mills College. By evening Monday May 3, the voting faculty of Mills College in Oakland, CA voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution of no confidence (73% voted in favor of the resolution, 16% voted no, and 11% abstained) against…
POSTED BY SARAH MINK Spring 2021 | Vol. 107, No. 2 The spring 2021 issue of Academe builds on the campaign for a New Deal for Higher Education launched earlier this year by the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers, and other allies. Contributors to the issue respond to the crisis now confronting higher education, calling for bold…
BY NADINE STROSSEN The following is a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger from Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School, Past National President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship. Dear Lee,…
BY THE CAMPUS POLICE WORKING GROUP The following is an excerpt, with source citations removed, from the recently released report On Campus Police Forces. In July 2020, the AAUP appointed a Campus Police Working Group and charged its members with drafting a report on the role of police on campus, the appropriateness of higher education…