Departments

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academic freedom

  • 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. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/8/2021

    A New Group Promises to Protect Professors’ Free Speech

    Princeton's Robert George hopes that the new organization Academic Freedom Alliance can influence university administrators to resist online outrage campaigns from the right and left and protect the right of scholars to speak freely on controversial subjects. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    2/25/2021

    Fired for Tweeting?

    "In a written statement to The Chronicle, Burnett said, “Collin College is a government organization that has unconstitutionally sought to punish me for my speech as a private citizen." 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/26/2021

    The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness

    Columnist Michelle Goldberg examines the roots of the academic Critical Race Theory movement, and concludes that while its practitioners are sometimes willing to prioritize justice over free speech, the right today simply wants to suppress ideas it fears.

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    2/23/2021

    Higher Ed’s Misguided Purging of Trump Supporters

    by Jonathan Zimmerman

    "The real threat isn’t a horde of evil Trumpers clamoring at our gates. It’s our quest to root out the enemies of democracy, which never ends well for the university."

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    2/21/2021

    Emmanuel Macron’s Socially Constructed Bogeymen

    by Daniel W. Drezner

    What, exactly, "Islamo-leftism" is, and what relationship it could possibly have to American academic theories, are two big questions left unanswered by the French President's attacks on academic ideas. 

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    2/11/2021

    Open Season on the Faculty

    Despite evidence that liberal indoctrination in classrooms is rare, state legislatures are proceeding with bills that would restrict professors' freedom to teach some subjects and in the case of Iowa to survey the political affiliations of faculty at state institutions.