The North Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors released an open letter Wednesday opposing a slate of higher education-related bills the group says will threaten academic freedom, diversity efforts and non-partisan university governance.
The letter, like the open letter from more than 670 faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill this week, opposes the expansion of powers of the North Carolina General Assembly and its political appointees and the marginalizing of faculty and campus-level administration. AAUP represents faculty across the 17-campus UNC System and, at the national level, tens of thousands of faculty across the country.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.