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Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom

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    In 2023, the Utah Legislature considered but didn’t pass a bill to ban DEI initiatives at all public universities in the state. The 2024 Legislature, led by the senate education committee chair John Johnson, passed a rewritten DEI ban. When asked, sponsors of the bill reported that they had no data to support the ban. It passed nonetheless. Despite the major disruption of DEI work being done at their institutions, none of the Utah college or university presidents or Faculty Senates spoke out publically against the bill.   Building on his success with DEI, John Johnson sponsored a “School of General Education” bill ( S.B. 226 ) in the 2024 session. It failed. Given the DEI precedent, it might well return next year.   What is driving these attempts by legislators to take over university functions that are better left to faculty with professional expertise? A February article in the  National Review  by Stanley Kurtz, co-author of a  General Education Act that served as a model for Jo
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DATA takes over the academy

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New issue of Academe gets at quantification issues that plague us The winter issue of Academe takes a critical look at the “higher ed data juggernaut.” Guest-edited by Siobhan Senier, professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire and vice president of UNH-AAUP, this special issue considers “the headache-inducing proliferation of tools and platforms that are increasing our workloads, shrinking our workforce, abrogating our academic freedom, interfering with our pedagogy, and generally policing us and our students.” Articles examine the spread of corporate educational technology on campus, the quantification of learning, compliance-driven demands for institutional data, and the biases underlying the data that shape public perceptions of higher education.  You can make a difference on your campus by joining the AAUP and getting involved with an existing chapter or starting a new one. AAUP members have access to full-issue PDFs of Academe, can opt to rece
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Begging the DEI Question

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On January 19, House Republicans voted to pass HB 261, Rep Katy Hall’s diversity, equity, and inclusion bill. Their votes suggest that they did not pay attention to Andy Larsen’s thoughtful analysis of the issue (Salt Lake Tribune, January 13): “One of the most popular anti-DEI studies is full of problems.” Or perhaps they were simply more interested in the politics of the issue than in careful analysis in the service of Utah’s students.  Larsen writes that the question the bill purports to answer is what to do with the “DEI bloat in academia,” as reported by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2021 (and in a flurry of subsequent pieces there). After pointing out serious methodological problems in the report (“it’s an insane way to draw conclusions”), Larsen concludes his analysis: “In the end, the anti-DEI folks have a problem: Their argument just isn’t that well-considered. They’re using shoddy methodology [and] they don’t address the research that led to DEI programs in the fi
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Tone Deaf: "Employment Recognition Strategy"

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This message today from our UVU Provost announcing a new "employee recognition strategy" reveals the ongoing sense that university administrators perceive members of the faculty as employees rather than colleages engaged in shared governance. Would they ever send a mass email to the university president, academic affairs officials, and deans referring to them as Dear Employees? Of course not. There is a clear hierarchy at work, one inimical to shared governance. And then the awards: not a single one for research or creative work. The message: we're a teaching university that brackets off all research and creative work as nice things that faculty insist on doing but that are completely isolated from teaching. To paraphrase a comment about badges from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madres": we don't need no stinking awards!
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"There is Power in a Union"—New monument to Labor Organizer Joe Hill unveiled in Salt Lake City's Sugar House Park

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Nearly 108 years after Joe Hill’s execution, a new historical marker about the famous labor organizer has been dedicated in Sugar House Park. An unveiling ceremony was held Saturday, hosted by the Central Utah Federation of Labor/AFL-CIO. The marker “will stand as a symbol of his enduring spirit and will serve as a reminder of the power of collective action,” its organizers say. Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 18, 2023, by Kelly Cannon https://www.sltrib.com/news/2023/11/18/sugar-house-park-has-new-memorial/ Head of our AAUP/AFT Union in Utah, Brad Asay spoke at the unveiling: As Joe Hill's song asserts: "There is Power in a Union." Listen to a rendition here: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=583796676&rls=en&q=Joe+Hill+There+is+Power+in+a+Union&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ2pvTtNCCAxUTLkQIHeVeAGsQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=1274&bih=756&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a57b5b1e,vid:laf4SPKlEVc,st:0 Proud mem
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How a "Top down" Leadership Culture Weakened Shared Governance...Applicable as well to Utah Valley University

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For decades after Texas A&M’s founding in 1876, the college’s doors were open only to white males who were required to participate in military training, an initial component of the Morrill Act for public land-grant institutions. Although cadet service was made voluntary in 1963, Texas A&M is one of just six senior military colleges that remain today. Faculty members told The Chronicle that this history makes itself felt in a top-down power structure that has been an integral aspect of Texas A&M’s operations — for better or worse — but that has also played into a growing chasm between professors and administrators over the years. A recent survey, conducted by state chapters of the American Association of University Professors from mid-August to early September, gave voice to these sentiments. Describing a “culture of fear,” one self-identified Texas A&M faculty member wrote in an open-response section that the faculty “cannot speak out about our administration or disagr
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Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom

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We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 14 of the AAUP's Journal of Academic Freedom. Our call for papers, "Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom," invited scholarly articles investigating the links between social power and the historical development and contemporary status of academic freedom. Seeking submissions that would build on volume 13’s focus on legislative interference—particularly with respect to teaching about the history of racism in the United States—we underscored the need to understand the forces intent on undermining academic freedom and the impact such attacks would have on democracy as we know it. Contributions selected for this year's volume document radical changes to the educational landscape and consider the broad implications of such changes, across this country and others. The volume’s fifteen articles explore recurring tensions between landscapes of social power rooted in principles of “power with others” through inclusion an
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