Northwestern Report on Academic Freedom

BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, an ad hoc committee of the Northwestern University faculty senate issued a report (pdf) addressing the cases of Laura Kipnis and the censorship of Atrium magazine. Kipnis, who was accused of retaliation for writing about a sexual harassment case on campus, has written a book about her experience, Unwanted…

The Costs of Corporatization

BY HANK REICHMAN For some time now the AAUP and many others have decried the growing privatization of our public colleges and universities and the corporatization of management styles at both public and private institutions.  The horrendous costs of these trends have become ever more apparent in the skyrocketing tuition bills and ballooning debt burden…

Review – Galileo's Middle Finger

BY PATRICIA S. BOWNE There’s been a lot posted here about Alice Dreger, but I don’t see any review of her book. Here’s one I wrote back in March 2015, when it was hot off the presses (this review previously appeared on The Royal Academy at Osyth blog). ———————– It’s been a while since I…

Alice Dreger Censored Again

BY HANK REICHMAN Alice Dreger, the controversial author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice, an exciting and important defense of academic freedom in the sciences, who last year resigned a position at Northwestern University to protest the university’s censorship of sexual content in a faculty-sponsored publication, is once again…

Alice Dreger on Tenure and Academic Freedom

BY HANK REICHMAN This Friday, March 4, Alice Dreger is scheduled to speak on academic freedom at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, under the sponsorship of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE).  Dreger is the author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, an engaging, personal,…

My Dream Date with Donald Trump

By Alice Dreger, reprinted from AliceDreger.com. Last night I dreamed I had a date with Donald Trump. We were in the Trump International Hotel and Tower® in Chicago, in a ballroom that looks out over the river. I was wearing my black Banana Republic dress, the one I wore to the Guggenheim Fellowship reception in 2008,…

Northwestern’s Censorship Board

Northwestern University has recently attracted attention for the attempts to silence a controversial medical journal it publishes called Atrium. I’ve previously criticized Northwestern for its failure to protect academic freedom in cases of sexual content. Sadly, the efforts to suppress Atrium seem to be part of a disturbing pattern. Last year, Northwestern professor Alice Dreger, author of…