BY HANK REICHMAN The other day I had occasion to speak with a leader of the AAUP chapter at Columbia University, my alma mater. I mentioned to him how useful and impressive I have found the coverage of university events in the student-run campus daily newspaper, the Spectator. He agreed that the students have done an…
BY JENNIFER RUTH “The disaster that we fear will happen to us is happening to us. Our good deans aren’t holding back the worst; they are legitimating it.” – Associate Professor of Germanic Studies Ben Robinson The IndyStar recently reported a story that contains lessons for us all about the overcompliance of administrators during this…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL An opera based on Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, with music by Mason Bates and libretto by Gene Scheer, had its world premiere at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music on November 15. The opera is glorious, and the performance, with every note sung and played…
BY BENJAMIN ROBINSON 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. At the end of July of this year,…
By JOHN K. WILSON In a breathtaking assault on academic freedom, Indiana University has suspended Abdulkader Sinno, an associate professor of political science and Middle Eastern studies, for the crime of reserving a room for a speech that the administration (in direct violation of the First Amendment) attempted to ban. Sinno reserved a room for…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last Friday, the administration of Indiana University decided to delay seeking trustee approval of a plan announced just two weeks earlier to move its Kinsey Institute to a separate nonprofit organization. The plan, made in response to legislators requiring a ban on all state funds to the Kinsey Institute because of…
BY JEFFREY C. ISAAC Over 1,700 of the roughly 2,400 graduate student workers at Indiana University have signed union cards affiliating with the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition with the United Electrical Workers union. The Indiana University administration has refused to recognize or even to meet with coalition leaders. And after years of seeking recognition, the…
BY JEFFREY ISAAC Jeffrey Isaac is the James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. He posted these thoughts about reopening IU on his personal blog, and we are reposting them with his permission. On May 27, the three-month U.S. death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 100,000. The death toll in the state of Indiana…
BY JEFFREY ISAAC Jeffrey Isaac is the James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. He posted these thoughts about reopening IU on his personal blog, and we are reposting them with his permission. On Thursday, May 21, I received an e-mail from Indiana University President Michael McRobbie addressed to all IU colleagues.…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday two new comments were posted to my piece of a week ago, “On Indiana University’s Response to Professor Rasmusen,” one by someone identified as “M,” who is apparently a sociologist, and the other by Professor Rasmusen himself. These, I believe, merit a response beyond what is available in the comments section,…