Institutional Governance & Accountability

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities AAUP Chapter
Academe Blog

Excerpt: The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) deplores Hamline University leadership’s continued misrepresentation of its 2022 violation of the principle of academic freedom.  

Unfortunately, Hamline administrators have failed to learn from their mishandling of this case; rather than recommit to the principle of academic freedom, they have affirmed their disregard for it.

Greg Childress
NC Newsline

Excerpt: America’s educators must not cower before lawmakers attempting to restrict what they teach students about America’s racial history, author and education reformer Lisa Delpit told hundreds of teachers attending the annual Color of Education summit in Raleigh on Saturday.

Delpit, the author of the groundbreaking book, “Multiplication Is for White People” said teachers must engage in the kind of “fugitive pedagogy” that educators used during the Jim Crow era to get around mandated curricula that hid the truth about America’s racist past and the enormous contributions Black people have made to the nation.

Ben Slivka
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: One year ago, I attended a pre-football game tailgate party on the Saturday of my 40th reunion weekend in Evanston, Illinois. Students at the party later complained about my words, and Northwestern University (NU) canceled me without speaking to me.

I escalated to the President, the General Counsel, the Chair, and the Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees. Despite my more than 7,000 volunteer hours and over seven million dollars in donations—NU has not apologized, has not rescinded my cancellation, and (I presume) continues to trample the free speech and due process rights of other Wildcats.

Meghan Cox Gurdon
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: We’re in a terrible spot, and everybody knows it. Americans on the right and left detest each other, excoriate each other and, with every flaring of rage, move further from any sense of pluralistic common cause. Citizens have lost confidence in officialdom. Fashionable ideologies that brook no good-faith dissent have surged into every corner of life. Make a minor demurral, even a joke, and you risk being subjected to the ghastly nullification rituals of what is called cancel culture.

It is this predicament, all of it, that Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott address in “The Canceling of the American Mind,” a lucid and comprehensive look at where we are and how we got here, and, less persuasively, what we can do to make things better.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: We have been following the gradual elimination of common terms deemed offensive or microaggressive. The latest is the word “picnic.” After the University of Nevada Las Vegas law school’s Environmental Law Society announced a picnic, it was renamed “Lunch by the Lake” due to “diversity and inclusion” concerns.

The ELS was able to avoid a second correction with a “Lunch in the Field” since “field” has also been found to be offensive at other schools. According to a memo, the law group informed members that the word “picnic” has “historical and offensive connotations,” and apologized for “any harm or discomfort” caused by its use. That is consistent with the view of  the University of Michigan’s IT department in finding that “Picnic” was an offensive word.

Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley's Blog

Excerpt: A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression shows that only a fifth of the public believe that conservatives can exercise free speech on campuses.

While faculty members often brush aside objections to the erosion of free speech, this poll is consistent with the view of students. What is striking is that such polling and objections have made little difference to administrators and academics who continue to maintain a hostile environment for conservative or libertarian views.