POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH This is the first in a series of posts attempting to articulate lessons from the last decade of polarization. The series is entitled “What Have We Learned?” but I’m keenly aware that the “we” is highly ambiguous and mostly fictional. We are not one group and there is no consensus on…
BY CATHRYN BAILEY I once had a faculty colleague who could be as blunt as a barbell, as direct as a laser beam, and as unblinking as an ancient tortoise. A middle-aged woman of color, she eschewed the feminine niceties required to earn her likability badge in the raced and gendered game of social and…
BY THE AAUP The AAUP issued the following statement today: As the ongoing demonstrations of the past few weeks have shown, our nation is once again being called on to reckon with systemic racism and its impact on Black, Latinx, indigenous, and other people of color. Black lives matter, and the AAUP stands in solidarity…
BY JUDY ROHRER It feels like every week there is a new case of an instructor being fired, released, or not renewed because of some (usually progressive) political statement or action. The increasing number of us in untenured and contingent positions find ourselves self-censoring in meetings, stressing over student evaluations, second-guessing our political activism, habitually…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF We are pleased to announce the publication of Volume 10 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. The journal features recent scholarship on academic freedom and its relation to contemporary crises of austerity, shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. This year’s contributors draw connections between the multiple frequencies of bullying present on…
Yesterday Marty Kich posted a piece, When a University President Becomes a Scold, that focused on the hypocrisy of Oklahoma Wesleyan President Everett Piper’s much-publicized screed against PC students and his widely quoted claim that his institution is “not a ‘safe place,’ but rather, a place to learn,” and that “This is not a day…
Dr. Everett Piper, the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan, has brought a great deal of attention to himself and to his institution because of a blog post that he wrote to students. The most widely quoted portion of the post has been its closing: “At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We…
John Wilson’s post on comedians who have been critical of college audiences is a terrific essay–one of the most incisively perceptive pieces on any topic that I have read this year. I would humbly add just a couple of observations of my own to the discussion that John’s essay should provoke. Provocative figures, including provocative…
On March 13, Joan W. Scott, Professor Emerita of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and a member of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, delivered a talk on “Civility and Academic Freedom” at a celebration of the AAUP’s centennial held at California State University, East Bay. That talk has now…
A few days ago Marty Kich posted an item on this blog that reported an effort by gun-rights advocates in Oklahoma to pass legislation that will allow guns to be brought onto the state’s 25 public college and university campuses. An officer of the state’s Second Amendment Association promotes the legislation in these terms: “’Anywhere…