Departments

;

academic freedom

  • SOURCE: NC Policy Watch
    6/14/2021

    Toll from Political Push at UNC Continues to Mount

    Malinda Maynor Lowery is leaving her position at the University of North Carolina because of the politicization of the university's governance by conservative activists, most recently reflected in the refusal to hire Nikole Hannah Jones with tenure. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/9/2021

    It’s Time for an Overhaul of Academic Freedom

    by Emily J. Levine

    The idea of academic freedom doesn't account for the present precarity of most university teachers, and doesn't rest on a positive concept of what professors should do with students and the public. 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    6/2/2021

    The Conservative Disinformation Campaign Against Nikole Hannah-Jones

    by Alice Marwick and Daniel Kreiss

    Two of Nikole Hannah-Jones's prospective UNC colleagues describe the pressure to prevent her being hired with tenure a part of a long pattern of conservative political activism using disinformation and distortion as weapons to control what is taught at universities.

  • SOURCE: The Root
    5/25/2021

    We Stand in Solidarity With Nikole Hannah-Jones

    by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Martha S. Jones

    "The University’s Board of Trustees has failed to uphold the first order values of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. And too many lawmakers have wrongly deemed it their role to reach into classrooms and tell educators what to teach and how to teach it."

  • SOURCE: TeenVogue
    5/19/2021

    Campus Cancel Culture Freakouts Obscure the Power of University Boards

    by Asheesh Kapur Siddique

    The real power at American universities lies with their boards of directors, which are increasingly drawn from the ranks of corporate America and have shown themselves willing to enforce ideological restrictions on teaching and research. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    4/13/2021

    ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny

    Neil Matkin's regime connects several trends: the politicization of higher ed administration, the diminishment of faculty's role in shared governance, and the imposition of business logic in higher ed administration. But faculty and staff say that the personal element is what makes the situation truly intolerable. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    4/15/2021

    Scholars Fear Impact of Poland's Law on the Holocaust

    Poland's right-wing government has sought to promote a narrative of national victimhood by the forces of Nazism and Communism. Historians who study the participation or complicity of Poles in the Holocaust face a threat of legal action that historian Audrey Kichelewski says is chilling. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    4/7/2021

    Why Republican Efforts to Ban the 1619 Project from Classrooms are so Misguided

    by Seth Rockman

    "Ultimately the deep concern about the 1619 Project’s truth-telling concerning the American past is not that it puts patriotism at risk, but rather that it jeopardizes particular versions of the American future," including a recent Heritage Foundation report that is mostly concerned that the 1619 project will lessen the appeal of libertarian capitalism. 

  • SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
    4/7/2021

    When Will Liberals Reclaim Free Speech?

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    "When speech can be suppressed, the people with the least power are likely to lose the most. That’s why every great tribune of social justice in American history—including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. —was also a zealous advocate for free speech."

  • SOURCE: D Magazine
    3/30/2021

    At Collin College, a Collision Over Free Speech

    History Professor Michael Phillips of Collin College charges that the administration and local politicians are conducting a "purge" of progressive ideas from the campus. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/26/2021

    The Social Justice Purge at Idaho Colleges

    Concerns about free speech on campus should consider the Idaho legislature's recent attacks on "critical race theory" as an effort to use education funds to restrict academic freedom, says NYT opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/18/2021

    When Academic Bullies Claim the Mantle of Free Speech

    by Jennifer Ruth

    It's past time to look at controversies over "woke" campus culture by considering the frequency with which faculty harassment follows from the exposure of alleged left-wing excess in the outrage-driven news media.