BY ERIC SCARFFE AND KATHERINE VALDE After the initial draft of House Bill (HB) 999 began circulating online last year, talk of Florida could be heard in the halls of almost every institution of higher education in the United States. As acting chapter president of the United Faculty of Florida at Florida International University, for…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a DEI committee? At the University of Texas–Austin, Professor Kathleen McElroy served on the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity. She also wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, entitled “The Importance of Faculty Diversity Is…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH In a letter to the editor, AAUP president Irene Mulvey responded to a series of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which AAUP statements were invoked to argue for the primacy of either academic freedom or diversity, equity, and inclusion. This framing pits the two against one another, as…
BY KELLY BENJAMIN Students from at least nine universities across Florida walked out of class yesterday in protest of Governor Ron DeSantis’s relentless barrage of attacks on the state’s higher education system. The walkouts, organized by the Dream Defenders and Stand for Freedom, came in response to DeSantis’s crackdown on all things “woke” in state education, including…
BY JENNIFER RUTH I don’t think I need to rehearse the incident and its very unjust consequences for one adjunct professor. It’s all over the news, both in higher ed and mainstream outlets. “Our response to the classroom event does not disregard or minimize the importance of academic freedom,” said Hamline University president Fayneese Miller…
BY RODOLFO ROSALES Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship recipients have formed a community in which we can share the products of our knowledge, our talents, our research, and our work in the arts, humanities, and sciences—along with many other intellectual accomplishments across the disciplines that have been significant in establishing our footprint in the history of…
BY LORI LATRICE MARTIN Nearly two and a half years ago, the world watched as George Floyd, a human being, had his life snuffed out by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Officer Chauvin applied pressure to George Floyd’s neck while other officers made sure that he could not move, and another made sure no bystanders…
BY STEVEN LUBET This essay was originally published on SAGE’s online network for social scientists, Social Science Space, and is republished with their permission. The right-wing Heritage Foundation has accused university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices of spreading anti-Semitism on campuses, but its recently issued report does not back up the claim. Although Heritage touts…