BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Last summer, even as COVID-19 cases were surging, university leaders in North Carolina tried to engineer a return to normal by August 2020. It famously failed. Soon after the start of the semester yielded a burst of COVID-19 clusters, the state’s two flagship universities, UNC–Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, shut…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Along with workers of all stripes mobilizing for better pay, better working conditions, and human dignity, the low-wage faculty majority of the wealthy Colorado Community College System has been organizing for change. So they have at their fingertips deeply hidden data they need for their advocacy, the American Association of University Professors…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Davarian L. Baldwin is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College and the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021). John K. Wilson interviewed Baldwin via…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Marquette professor John McAdams, who died on Thursday at the age of 75, was a controversial figure. His most important legacy will be the 2018 ruling of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in McAdams v. Marquette, which is incredibly important in establishing contractual protections for the academic freedom of professors at private…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a statement, “On Academic Freedom for our Higher Education Users,” Zoom has announced that it will leave content moderation issues to universities for virtually all matter “related to the institution’s academics or operations” and engage in content-based censorship only under rare, clearly delineated conditions. In short, the company now says it…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Responding to the AAUP’s statement opposing Florida’s “viewpoint diversity” legislation, a colleague teaching at a major research university sent me this poem. The would-be poet wishes to remain anonymous; something about preserving dignity. This year marks the 25th annual April celebration of National Poetry Month, so I thought it worth posting. …
BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today. In an ostensible effort to protect “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on public college and university campuses, the Florida legislature has approved legislation that, like similar proposals this year in Iowa and elsewhere, amounts to what the AAUP has repeatedly described as a “solution in…
BY GLENN COLBY The results of the AAUP’s 2020–21 Faculty Compensation Survey, released today, show that real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession, and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting…
BY MICHAEL DECESARE The 2021 AAUP Shared Governance Conference is in June, and there’s just one week left to submit a proposal for a paper presentation on a topic relating to academic governance. Authors are encouraged to explore connections between their institutions and other institutions, and to consider the application of AAUP governance policies. Possible areas of focus…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Here are some events happening in the next month that relate to free expression and academic freedom issues and may interest AcademeBlog readers (followed by some recordings of events held earlier this year, and deadlines for some proposals and grants. Readers are encouraged to mention additional events in the comments. Below…