In Defense of Departmental Academic Freedom

BY JOHN K. WILSON Former AAUP president Cary Nelson wrote an essay for Inside Higher Ed last week, arguing that departments issuing statements critical of the Israeli government are violating academic freedom and must be silenced: A department is an administrative entity, an arm of the university. Academic and professional standards for departments exist, such…

On Extramural Utterances

The new issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom was released yesterday, including Cary Nelson’s much-anticipated essay. As an argument for firing Salaita, Nelson’s essay is a complete failure. Robert Warrior writes a response, but it’s unnecessary because nothing Nelson writes provides any evidence to justify Salaita’s dismissal. The bulk of the essay is devoted…

Another Lesson from Illinois: Beware Tenured Radicals

By Robert Warrior, Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As the one-year anniversary of the debacle over the aborted appointment of Steven Salaita at Illinois approached, Inside Higher Education published an op-ed by former AAUP president Cary Nelson spelling out the lessons he contends we can all learn from…

Why Nelson Is Wrong about Salaita

Cary Nelson has an essay at InsideHigherEd today (along with Michael Rothberg) on the Salaita case. Here’s my comment on Nelson’s piece. First, I must note that absolutely nothing in Nelson’s essay is relevant to the actual reasons given by the chancellor and the trustees for firing Salaita. They have never questioned Salaita’s academic credentials,…

The Debate Over the Salaita Case

Today’s InsideHigherEd includes dueling essays on the Salaita firing by me and by Cary Nelson. You can read my comment on Nelson’s essay here. Nelson’s assertion that “I believe this was an academic, not a political, decision” strains all credulity. No one can seriously believe that the political consequences of hiring a controversial professor had no…

Peter Wood’s Attack on the AAUP

I invited National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood to speak at the AAUP conference this past weekend, and organized a couple of sessions with him on the Higher Education Bubble and the NAS report on the teaching of American history. Unfortunately, Wood may be accustomed to speaking before loyal supporters and friends, since he…

News from the 2012 AAUP Annual Meeting

The 2012 AAUP Annual Meeting and conference on higher education occurred this past week, and it was another interesting event. The AAUP censured 3 Louisiana Universities: Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Northwestern State University and Southeastern Louisiana University. The AAUP also passed a resolution critical of the University of Virginia board for a secret…