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…
JOHN K. WILSON The AAUP recently issued a draft report on “The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX” and requested comments that are due today, April 15 (send comments to titleIX@aaup.org). I’ve been putting off my response because I feared that I would have to write a lengthy critique. But it turns out the…
Former Northwestern professor Alice Dreger spoke in Evanston on Sept. 30, a month after resigning from her position in the medical school to protest censorship of the medical journal Atrium after she was guest editor of the “Bad Girls” issue. Dreger told an audience at Bookends and Beginnings bookstore that Northwestern administrators had removed the issue from…
Earlier this week, on August 17, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a decision refusing to assert jurisdiction in the case of the Northwestern University grant-in-aid scholarship football players’ petition for an election seeking union representation. While this is a disappointment to those hoping that the Board would uphold the Regional Director’s ruling finding…
This morning, the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling overturning a decision last year by a Chicago district official that had supported the right of Northwestern’s football players to unionize. The NLRB ruled that the case “would not promote stability in labor relations.” They wrote, “Our decision is primarily premised on a finding” that…
By Alice Dreger, reprinted from AliceDreger.com. Last night I dreamed I had a date with Donald Trump. We were in the Trump International Hotel and Tower® in Chicago, in a ballroom that looks out over the river. I was wearing my black Banana Republic dress, the one I wore to the Guggenheim Fellowship reception in 2008,…
Northwestern University has recently attracted attention for the attempts to silence a controversial medical journal it publishes called Atrium. I’ve previously criticized Northwestern for its failure to protect academic freedom in cases of sexual content. Sadly, the efforts to suppress Atrium seem to be part of a disturbing pattern. Last year, Northwestern professor Alice Dreger, author of…
On April 25, Northwestern football players will vote on whether to form a union. But we may never know the results of the vote, because Northwestern University is fighting to have any union banned after the NLRB Regional Director ruled it could exist. In a legal brief appealing the ruling (pdf), Northwestern made a number…