BY JOHN K. WILSON In December, the Northwestern University AAUP chapter released a “Report of the Committee on Northwestern University’s COVID-19 Response,” which was endorsed by the chapter members and more than 100 faculty. Tomorrow, the authors of the report will discuss it in an online session on Tues. Feb. 16 at 5-6pm Central time…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Northwestern University professors Jackie Stevens and Jorge Coronado, two officers of the Northwestern AAUP chapter, have an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times today titled “Hey, Northwestern students, choose your own grade point average!” The article criticizes a new Northwestern University policy adopted by the administration during the pandemic. As faculty members…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The outrage machine against “cancel culture” has already been put into full motion with Joseph Epstein, an emeritus lecturer at Northwestern University who retired from the English Department almost 20 years ago but still manages to annoy people with his rather stupid op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. The latest essay…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On October 17, about 300 Northwestern University students and supporters held a protest in Evanston as part of their ongoing efforts to abolish the campus police department and enact other reforms. During the protest, a campus banner was burned, various buildings and even murals in town were tagged with messages including…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, was having a quiet sabbatical, spending it as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, until someone looked up his many controversial writings. Now a petition signed by more than 4,400 (and supported by the Daily Northwestern editorial board) is demanding “Ban…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The New Yorker revealed today that Laura Kipnis’ Title IX nightmare, discussed in her recent book, did not end when the book came out. In fact, six graduate students and four professors at Northwestern filed another Title IX complaint against her retaliation because of the book, and the administration investigated her for…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Review of Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus by Laura Kipnis (HarperCollins, April 4, 2017) When Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis wrote an irreverent essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2015 about regulations on campus, and discussed a sexual assault case, it sparked discussion, praise, outrage, protest (literal mattress-waving…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, an ad hoc committee of the Northwestern University faculty senate issued a report (pdf) addressing the cases of Laura Kipnis and the censorship of Atrium magazine. Kipnis, who was accused of retaliation for writing about a sexual harassment case on campus, has written a book about her experience, Unwanted…
BY AARON BARLOW The first ‘bigly’ Twitter and academic freedom case was that of Associate Professor Steven Salaita just two-and-a-half years ago (there were others earlier, including that in 2013 of Professor David Guth that resulted in a policy instituted by the Kansas Board of Regents that “faculty members and other employees can be fired…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On Sept. 21, political science professor Jackie Stevens began teaching her class at Northwestern University. Earlier that week, she didn’t know if that would happen. Stevens had been banned from campus (and prohibited from any contact with students) since July 28, when the administration announced she was a potential threat and…