BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Years ago, I was speaking with a colleague about one of the paradoxes of university life: tenured faculty enjoy more job security than almost any other occupational group in US society, yet they are often afraid to fight for their interests as a group. My colleague accounted for this lack of collective…
BY JENNIFER RUTH In April 2019, a friend and I visited the grave of Lin Zhao in Suzhou, China to pay respect to one of history’s bravest defenders of intellectual freedom. Scanning a hill dotted with around 300 gravestones, we saw three CCTV cameras trained on one spot and climbed to it. My friend snapped…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “Where woke goes to die.” Let’s call this phrase what it is: fascist propaganda. In “The Collapse of Radical Reconstruction,” the first episode of Princeton professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s podcast “History is Us,” Le Moyne College professor Douglas Egerton says, “Reconstruction did not fail. Reconstruction was killed.” What does “where woke…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN For academic freedom’s advocates, there is much to like about the recent federal court ruling prohibiting Florida’s board of governors from enforcing the Individual Freedom Act. Especially gratifying are the rhetorical tropes Judge Mark Walker deploys in justifying this preliminary injunction. When the legislature adopted what Governor Ron DeSantis dubbed the…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN A note from Academe Blog contributing editor Jennifer Ruth: This post is the second part of a two-part series on the DeSantis plan for higher education. It is required reading for all of us working to thwart the state-driven fascism (or what I have been calling “subnational authoritarianism”) that seeks to…
BY TIMOTHY V. KAUFMAN-OSBORN A note from Academe Blog contributing editor Jennifer Ruth: This is the first part of a special two-part series by Timothy Kaufman-Osborn on the DeSantis plan for higher education. It is required reading for all of us working to thwart the state-driven fascism (or what I have been calling “subnational authoritarianism”)…
BY JENNIFER RUTH It’s worth highlighting an AAUP toolkit from the past in light of these two alarming articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education — “Public University Curricula are Government Speech, Florida Says” and “It’s Not Clear Whether Public-College Professors have First Amendment Rights When They’re Teaching”: The AAUP Action Plan for Protecting an…
BY HANK REICHMAN Seven professors and a college student in Florida’s public higher education institutions filed suit yesterday to block a new state law that Governor Ron DeSantis calls the “Stop WOKE Act” and which curtails instruction about race and gender as well as much race-based expression in private business. The Florida and national branches…
BY HANK REICHMAN The state of Florida has gotten something of a reputation for zaniness. The “Florida Man” meme has been the source of both laughter and horror, as tales of outlandish behavior in the news repeatedly go viral. To read some of the most outrageous (and entertaining), go here. But these days “Florida Man”…
BY GINA TIGRI Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? This question was famously asked numerous times in the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) amid the anti-Communist frenzy known as the Red Scare in the McCarthy era. A new higher education bill was recently…