BY THE AAUP RESEARCH DEPARTMENT This is the third in a series of three blog posts on findings from the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. You can read the first post here and the second post here. Much attention has been given—and rightfully so—to the student debt crisis in the…
BY MICHAEL THADDEUS A depressingly familiar trend in higher education has been the gradual erosion of ladder faculty positions and their replacement by positions with no prospect of tenure. The former tend to be relatively well-paid and secure; the latter, undervalued and marginal. Though it ranks among the richest American universities, my own institution, Columbia…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MILWAUKEE AAUP As faculty, staff, and students prepare to return to a newly re-opened campus this fall, UWM AAUP reminds us of the centrality of academic freedom and democratic governance in ensuring our collective safety and public health. The Covid-19 pandemic is not over. Faculty, staff, and students must be free…
BY THE AAUP RESEARCH DEPARTMENT This is the first in a series of three blog posts on findings from the AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession. New data from an AAUP survey detail the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty salaries and fringe benefits for both tenure-line and non-tenure-track…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS We in the Colorado Conference asked ourselves a few questions as the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine began to lift. Could we create a midsummer event requiring just a few hundred miles of driving that would bring together AAUP members from half a dozen cities? Could we link up, via satellite, to the AAUP…
BY ALEX SMALL I recently read Tom Ginsburg’s article “How to Truly Protect Academic Freedom” with sympathetic disagreement. I share his concern over the many high-profile incidents that he cites, and I have lamented many of them with friends. I am an avid consumer (even tester?) of academic freedom, lodging dissents in my university’s academic…
BY HANK REICHMAN Greg Lukianoff, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and three co-authors have written a piece, “13 important points in the campus & K-12 ‘critical race theory’ debate,” discussing the avalanche of proposed and, in some cases, already enacted legislation governing classroom instruction in both higher ed and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week the AAUP, joined by more than 90 other groups, issued a powerful “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” And, of course, it’s not only legislation. The continuing controversy over the failure of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees to approve a…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Last year my book, The Future of Academic Freedom, received the American Library Association’s Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award for best published work for the previous two years in the area of intellectual freedom. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic the awards ceremony had to be cancelled, but now, a year later…
BY DANIEL MORRIS On June 11, 2021, the Purdue Board of Trustees passed a civics literacy requirement for undergraduates despite opposition from the faculty senate. Placed in the context of what happened at the University of North Carolina in April, when, as Lindsie Rank reports, “the board of trustees refused to approve the faculty’s recommendation…