BY AMIR HUSSAIN Critics and educators may plausibly perceive social media as preferring and promulgating fragmentary thinking, consumerist scrolling, and buzzwords over the attention to nuance and context that is cultivated in university settings. But the emergence of this arena nonetheless needs to be seen as relevant—even vital—for considering the intellectual and political landscape of…
BY HANK REICHMAN James Vernon, the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley and former co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association, is also leading Berkeley’s recently launched Global Democracy Commons project. I was honored that James invited me to interview for the first installment of the program’s new monthly…
BY EILEEN BORIS This post is part of a blog series, organized by Annelise Orleck, that will focus on recent crackdowns on protests at US college and university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza. You can read the first post and an introduction to the series here. In yet another assault on academic freedom, civil…
BY JEFFREY C. ISAAC This week Donald Trump held a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, promoting the themes of “Make America Great Again,” “America First,” and, of course, “The Greatness of Trump.” According to a New York Times headline, it was “A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny, and Racism.” Stephen…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY With organizational help from Washington Post humor columnist Alexandria Petri’s recent piece on presidential endorsements . . . The Washington Post, among other major newspapers, is not endorsing presidential candidates this year. And major universities are stepping back from issuing statements on matters of public concern. Since the latter institutions are choosing…
BY ROSS JACKSON As the 2024 presidential election approaches, the importance of academic freedom in higher education and its broader societal implications are a primary point of focus and debate. Academic freedom, defined as the principle that scholars can engage in teaching and research without fear of censorship or retribution, is a cornerstone of democratic…
POSTED BY THE AAUP We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 15 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, “Truth-Telling versus Propaganda—Exposing the Rift,” invited scholarly articles building on the themes of the previous two volumes to advance understandings of the salience of academic freedom not only to higher…
BY THERESA A. KULBAGA Standing in solidarity with colleagues for better wages and working conditions is what being a union means. It’s no surprise, then, that management’s first union-busting tactic is always to attempt to divide workers and turn us against each other. At Miami University, we voted overwhelmingly to unionize faculty and librarians in…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On October 26, the Executive Committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter issued the following public statement regarding the recent police raid on Penn undergraduate students: We are alarmed by the Penn administration’s escalating use of police action against Penn students. So too are we alarmed by the University’s pattern—established…
BY ASHA NADKARNI AND LAURA BRIGGS This post is part of a blog series, organized by Annelise Orleck, that will focus on recent crackdowns on protests at US college and university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza. You can read the first post and an introduction to the series here. Like many campuses, the University…