Kavanaugh v. Academic Knowledge
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This piece is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Many people are worried about the damage the Kavanaugh appointment will do to the Supreme Court and to American politics. I’m worried about the new damage…
The Cloud Inside the Silver Lining Inside the Cloud
BY HANK REICHMAN If there was a silver lining to be found in the cloud of partisan obfuscation and skewed logic that was Chief Justice John Roberts’ ruling in Trump v. Hawaii, which upheld the president’s notorious Muslim ban, it was the decision’s formal repudiation of the Supreme Court’s infamous 1943 decision in Korematsu v.…
AAUP, NEA File Amicus Brief With Supreme Court in Agency Fee Case
BY HANK REICHMAN On Friday, January 19, the AAUP and the National Education Association (NEA) jointly filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31. In that case the ostensible plaintiff, Mark Janus, backed by the National Right to Work Committee and other anti-union groups, seeks…
“Gobbledygook?” Supreme Court Justices Dismiss Social Science
BY HANK REICHMAN It has become something of a truism that the Trump administration and the Republican Party more generally have been dismissive of and even hostile to the findings and methods of scientific research. The Union of Concerned Scientists this summer released an exhaustive report, Sidelining Science Since Day One, that documents how in…
AAUP Joins Defense of Affirmative Action
On Friday the AAUP joined the American Council of Education and 36 other higher education groups in filing an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court the right of colleges to consider race in admissions. The case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, over which the court will hear oral argument on…