Your Cart is Empty
Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
The National Endowment for the Humanities—after losing in court over the termination of more than 1,400 grants, totaling over $100 million—began offering this month to reinstate those awards.
But first, the agency has a basic question for the grant recipients it previously cut off: “Do you want NEH to reinstate this award?” “Evaluate your organization’s intent and capacity to determine whether you want to resume the project,” the agency says on its website, in a step-by-step explanation telling organizations and individuals how to fill out the “Reinstatement Assurances Form” to revive their grants.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
