Empty classroom

Vanessa Guillen and the Ghosts of Sanctuary Campus: On the Schoeller Affair, Campus Protest and ‘Free Speech’

BY RACHEL IDA BUFF Last week, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee students organized a Peaceful Protest Against Professor Betsey Schoeller. On a warm summer evening, the event drew about 250 people, most of them young, many of them people of color. Most wore masks and stood in small clusters around Spaights Plaza, a gathering place in the…

DHS logo

AAUP Statement on July 6 DHS Ruling on International Students

BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today: The Department of Homeland Security’s July 6 ruling regarding international students and the upcoming 2020–21 academic year is but the latest example of the Trump administration’s callous cruelty, especially toward immigrants and those it deems “other.” The American Association of University Professors thus joins many…

Coronavirus

Doubletalk on Top of Doubletalk

BY MARTIN KICH During the lengthy contract impasse that led up to our three-week strike in winter of 2019, our administration made many draconian proposals. That their proposed gutting of the retrenchment article of our contract was the most draconian is evidenced by their removing that one article from the contract that they imposed, provoking…

Coronavirus

Putting the Scope of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Perspective

BY MARTIN KICH Despite the considerable efforts to personalize the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, the politicization of the pandemic has resulted in endless arguments over what all sorts of moving numbers mean. I think that putting the current numbers in some broader perspective could help to show why much of the other noise about…

Donald Trump’s Incredible Attack on Free Speech

BY JOHN K. WILSON Today, Donald Trump tweeted: “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status…and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”…

University gate

Ending Institutional Racism in Higher Education

BY MICHAEL A. DOVER Recently Danielle Smith, executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, asked, “If you only have fifteen minutes to talk to a brand-new-to-the-topic mostly wealthy, white audience about racism/white supremacy culture and how this plays out in the organizations they lead . . . what would…

The Indoctrination of Jonathan Zimmerman

BY JOHN K. WILSON Jonathan Zimmerman has an essay today attacking the 1619 Project, and since InsideHigherEd has eliminated comments on its articles, I wanted to discuss it here. Zimmerman is obviously right when he writes that “we must also avoid imposing a singular interpretation or ideology that will prevent — not promote — a…