BY KARMA R. CHÁVEZ Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Callie Kennedy and Parham Daghighi, former teaching assistants (TAs) in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. I will detail the specific reason for our acquaintance, but the broader reason has to do with the…
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 MARJORIE HEINS The disastrous December 5 congressional hearing in which three university presidents were lambasted for allegedly not dealing with antisemitism on campus was a political ambush from the start, and the presidents, instead of blandly acquiescing in some outrageously inappropriate questioning, needed to respond with righteous indignation. The tone was set early on…
BY THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA The following statement by the president of the Middle East Studies Association and the chair of that association’s Committee on Academic Freedom was published online on December 18. Open Letter to US and Canadian College and University Presidents We write on behalf of the Middle East…
BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY AAUP CHAPTER The following statement was issued on December 18, 2023. Since October 7th, our university community has experienced extraordinary challenges to academic freedom. These challenges emerge in a global climate of restrictions on Palestine- related speech, along with a national climate of attacks against the…
BY ALAN SINGER An earlier version of this blog post appeared on the Daily Kos. We are reposting it here with permission of the author. Many of us have seen the congressional sound bites. MAGA superstar Elise Stefanik made mincemeat out of Ivy League college presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of…
BY THE AAUP-PENN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE This morning, Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management in New York, who initiated the successful effort to remove University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill, distributed an email to the university’s trustees posing a series of eighteen questions, several of which raise serious concerns about the fate…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT testified on Capitol Hill on December 5, 2023, at a hearing on “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” and the bipartisan political backlash with demands for their resignations is unprecedented in the history of higher education, including the forced resignation of Penn president…
BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF AAUP-PENN The following statement was issued by the executive committee of the University of Pennsylvania AAUP chapter on December 9 in response to the resignation of Penn President Elizabeth Magill following her much-criticized testimony before a Congressional committee. In recent months, trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have…
BY JOHN K. WILSON It’s always distressing during contentious times when neutral statements for free speech are twisted beyond recognition with false smears of bias and bigotry. In a November 27 essay in The Hill, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet denounced the American Association of University Professors for a November 15 statement, “Polarizing Times Demand…