The new president of the American Association of University Professors recently referred to Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance as a “fascist.”
In an August 8 statement, Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University anthropologist whose research “is a mixture of traditional and cyber-based ethnography,” took issue with Vance’s claim that universities are the “Enemy” and are “dedicated to ‘deceit and lies, not to the truth.’”
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Higher education is making news these days. In Congressional testimony, the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn couldn’t tell whether calling for the genocide of the Jews constituted harassment without knowing the context. The effects of their testimony reverberate.
Days later, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a lengthy report condemning “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.” Prominently featured was a detailed complaint about New College of Florida, where I serve as admissions director.
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The donor revolts at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and elsewhere are the long-overdue wake up calls that their faculty and administrators needed. The overwhelming majority of politically progressive faculty and administrators have long guarded their right to advance their cherished political causes inside and outside the classroom, while punishment has awaited those who challenge the shibboleths. Instead of the free exchange of ideas and the intellectual capaciousness that ultimately advance social justice, it is now clearer than ever that it is not social justice they have fostered but mindless ideology and hate.
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Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed two bills into law designed to reform public higher education institutions in Texas. One bans them from implementing DEI policies and another revises the tenure structure.
Both bills, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, passed the legislature during the regular legislative session. Senate Bill 17 bans public colleges and universities from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that prioritize gender, race, ethnicity and ideological beliefs as factors for hiring or admission policies. Earlier this year, Gov. Abbott’s chief of staff sent a letter to public higher education institutions and state agencies saying if they were implementing DEI policies, they were violating federal law. In response, the heads of Texas colleges and universities said they were “pausing” and reviewing their DEI policies. The new law requires them to terminate them.
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More than 500 professors at Eastern Michigan University went on strike Wednesday after their contract concluded on Aug. 31, according to a statement by the professors’ union.
Nearly 91% of the tenured and tenured track faculty in the Eastern Michigan University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (EMU-AAUP) voted to strike Tuesday following the start of classes on Aug. 29, according to a statement by the union. Students have been advised to continue to go to class as normal and wait to see if their professor shows up, as the strike commences.
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A prominent former professor at the University of Michigan (UM) has been accused by eight former students of sexual misconduct, ranging from groping to rape, according to reports.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told The Michigan Star that Professor Bruce Conforth’s tenure at the school ended in 2017, when he admitted to allegations of sexual misconduct. Conforth resigned, and agreed to “a separation agreement outlined his permanent removal from the university, no contact with students and other requirements.”
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