Columbia AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom in the Current Crisis

BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The following statement was issued on December 14, 2023. Since October 7, Columbia University has experienced extraordinary, even unprecedented, challenges to academic freedom and violations of faculty governance.  Untenured faculty have been harassed for organizing events squarely within their fields of expertise; a Barnard department…

A Smoking Gun at Columbia University

BY MICHAEL THADDEUS A depressingly familiar trend in higher education has been the gradual erosion of ladder faculty positions and their replacement by positions with no prospect of tenure. The former tend to be relatively well-paid and secure; the latter, undervalued and marginal. Though it ranks among the richest American universities, my own institution, Columbia…

And Then There is Zoom

BY HANK REICHMAN If you weren’t familiar with Zoom before the COVID-19 pandemic, you must be now.  Everyone is using it — for faculty and staff meetings, seminar talks and panels, political and union organizing, socializing with friends and family, holding remote weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, and, of course, teaching online classes.  And, yes, we’re…

Bari Weiss and Coward Culture

BY JOHN K. WILSON Bari Weiss is a coward. That claim may seem incredible to those who have read the fulsome praise from conservatives about Weiss’ decision last week to quit her job as an op-ed editor and writer at the New York Times, and her open resignation letter. Newt Gingrich tweeted, “Bari Weiss’s Letter…

Columbia Bans Marching Band

BY HANK REICHMAN Despite the presence of the verb “ban” in my headline, this post does not uncover yet another censorious outrage committed by a university administration — well, at least not a very major one.  Still, a recent decision by the administration of Columbia University to prohibit its university marching band from performing at…

From the Golan Heights to Morningside Heights: Local Implications of Israel’s Political Blacklist

BY KATHERINE FRANKE AND MICHAEL ALTMAN-LUPU We have a message for Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar: welcome to the blacklist.  You have joined a growing group of human rights defenders who have been denied entry to Israel and Palestine by the Israeli government because we dared to argue that Israel should comply with international…