BY ANTHONY DAVID VERNON What is proper duty? For Chinese philosopher Xunzi, proper duty included “the way of the ritual . . . and return to order.” Double booking breaks rituals and deviates from order. It is problematic for all parties, as we all have what Xunzi refers to as “a sense of duty” or…
BY HANK REICHMAN Given the daily fire hose of mostly unconstitutional (if not simply illegal) assaults by the Trump regime on the rights of immigrants, on “DEI,” on trans people, on the legal profession, on the judiciary, on social security and the Veterans’ Administration, and, of course, of most direct concern to readers of this…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In a review in spring 2022, which seems a century ago, I wrote that “an irony or paradox adheres to [Ellen Schrecker’s book] The Lost Promise in that this riches-to-rags story leaves readers not dispirited but inspired.” Although Schrecker’s book traces the seemingly lost promise of the 60s’ dream of free public…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following extraordinary statement was published today in the New York Review of Books and is reposted here with their permission. The statement’s signatories include virtually every leading First Amendment scholar in the country, conservative and liberal. Among the signatories are Eugene Volokh and Michael McConnell, arguably the two most prominent…
BY JENNIFER RUTH AAUP and other campus unions are mobilizing to defend their institutions against the Trump administration’s outright assault on higher education and insist that their university administrations do the same. I am posting some of the letters to university administrations that I’m aware of so that they might provide inspiration and models for…
BY EMMAIA GELMAN Yesterday, campus communities watched in horror as news unfolded that Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia University who bravely acted as negotiator between the Palestine solidarity encampment and Columbia administrators, had been snatched from university housing by ICE agents on orders from the White House. It is the cataclysm that has…
BY HANK REICHMAN As an alum of Columbia University (CC ’69) I received an email yesterday from the university’s interim president Katrina Armstrong responding to the Trump Administration’s decision to arbitrarily cancel some $400 million in federal grants “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The email…
BY KATHERINE FRANKE The following is the text of a statement issued on January 10, 2025 by Katherine Franke, formerly the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University. It is posted here with her permission For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested…
BY ROBERT NEWTON This post is part of a blog series, organized by Annelise Orleck, that will focus on recent crackdowns on protests at US college and university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza. You can read the first post and an introduction to the series here. Across the country last fall, students took to…