POSTED BY THE AAUP We are excited to announce the publication of volume 17 of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. This year’s call for papers was inspired, in part, by urban and cultural studies scholar Davarian Baldwin’s rousing call for courage in the face of political and material repression in US colleges and universities:…
BY ANNA FEDER This post was published previously on Academic Freedom on the Line, a Substack of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. Counterintuitively, the most important legal tool of repression against campus speech has been civil rights law—specifically, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits institutions that receive federal…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL Academe Blog published the author’s post, “The AAUP Errs in Endorsing Cait Conley for Congress,” along with a response by Giulia Zanni, Robert Newton, Ezra Susser, Sarah Borden, Susan Witte, and Page Fortna, “Why We Stand by the AAUP’s Endorsement of Cait Conley.” Below is Segal’s reply to that response. I…
BY GIULIA ZANNI, ROBERT NEWTON, EZRA SUSSER, SARAH BORDEN, SUSAN WITTE, AND PAGE FORTNA Below is a response to Daniel A. Segal’s post, “The AAUP Errs in Endorsing Cait Conley for Congress.” Segal’s subsequent reply to this response is also being published on the blog. We are grateful to Academe Blog for publishing Daniel A.…
BY DANIEL A. SEGAL Academe Blog is publishing a response to this post by Giulia Zanni, Robert Newton, Ezra Susser, Sarah Borden, Susan Witte, and Page Fortna, “Why We Stand by the AAUP’s Endorsement of Cait Conley,” and Segal’s reply to that response. As part of its new program of political endorsements, the AAUP has…
BY MADHAV TR AND LEXI ALLISON What is happening at the New School is happening to higher education across the United States. The story is a familiar one: an administration determining a university’s future without consulting the people who keep it running, including students, faculty, and staff. The only people they do consult are those…
BY JOE LOCKARD Book bans and censorship in middle and high schools also affect higher education. They shape the reading knowledge of students who graduate and enter colleges and universities. An absence of knowledge about racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity and histories among incoming students creates learning gaps and campus culture problems. Crucially, censorship…
BY MICHAEL FERGUSON Following is the editor’s introduction to the fall 2026 issue of Academe, “The Brave New World of Higher Ed,” out this week. The full issue and table of contents can be found here. This issue of Academe arrives at a pivotal moment for US higher education—and for democracy. As midterm elections approach, the federal…
BY MELISSA CHADBURN In 2023, I was confounded by my humanness as I entered my first full-time visiting faculty position in my mid-forties. The brain fog. The creeping anxiety. Feeling my confidence and capacity to speak in front of other people vanish, even though I had a lot of experience with public speaking, panels, and…
BY KATIE RAINWATER This post follows up on, and covers new developments related to, the author’s June 15 Academe Blog post. In June, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC)—the traditional accreditor for the Southeastern United States, now also called the Commission on Colleges and Universities (CCU)* —released a first draft of new standards…
BY D.J. HOPKINS AND ZACH JUSTUS It’s time for your department to produce its annual assessment report. You and your colleagues have agreed on the learning outcomes to measure, and you have the data, but no one looks forward to this task, so you put it off. You answer emails, do some compliance training, and…