BY HANK REICHMAN In the AAUP report “National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom” issued last month readers will find the following: Dr. Eugene Gu is a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University whose research seeks to transplant healthy fetal organs in utero to fetuses with fatal congenital diseases so they can survive to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Update, July 14: Trinity Dean of Faculty Releases Report after Review of Recent Social Media Activity July 14, 2017 To the Trinity College Community, Freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression in pursuit of the truth are essential, not only to the health of the academy but also to…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Twitter has been central to a number of controversial cases that have tested the definitions and the limits of academic freedom. The brevity and compression of tweets means that they exist outside of any fixed context and they are therefore very frequently tonally ambiguous. What seems very provocative or even outrageous…
BY KELLY HAND “Can social media cause revolution?” Adeline Koh asks this question in her May–June Academe article, “Imagined Communities, Social Media, and the Faculty.” Countering critics who see online engagement with politics and social issues as a form of ineffectual “slacktivism,” she provides a theoretical framework for understanding the potential of social media to…
BY KELLY WILZ “We need media literacy as much as we need to learn to read.”- Jennifer Pozner “The world will not be a better place when these fact-based news organizations die. We will be propelled into a culture where facts and opinions will be interchangeable, where lies will become true and where fantasy will…
Over the three years of my involvement with the AAUP, I’ve watched this venerable faculty institution complete a reorganization and begin a process of revitalization that is already placing it at the forefront of faculty advocacy, reaching far beyond what had been envisioned for it less than a generation ago. As a defender of academic…
Anyone who thought that minority student complaints about racism at the University of Missouri, which led to the resignations on Monday of system President Timothy Wolfe and Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, were exaggerated should check out this account of developments over the past two days from the campus newspaper, The Maneater. “Many students…
This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education published an excellent and important article by Beth McMurtrie entitled, “Nearly a Year Later, Fallout From Salaita Case Lingers on Campuses.” It is definitely worth reading, and not just because I’m quoted in it several times. The article also provides an opportunity for some further reflection on the…
The following is the text of a talk that I delivered on March 30, 2015 at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio, as part of the Spring Semester Centennial Speakers Series. The series celebrates the centennial of the AAUP and the contributions of all those who have served within leadership positions in the WSU AAUP…
