China vows to drive 'smart aleck' lecturers from its universities; Guardian, 12/4/15

Tom Phillips, Guardian; China vows to drive 'smart aleck' lecturers from its universities:

"Zhi Zhenfeng, an academic from the government-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times newspaper the university crackdown was designed “to strike fear in people and to reform their behaviour”.

In his essay, the education minister, said the well-being of the Communist party and Chinese higher education was threatened by the misdeeds of “smart alecks who mislead their supervisors and defraud their subordinates”.

“All levels of party organisations, party members and cadres in the education system must remain vigilant, take action [and] show self-control,” added Yuan, who is the former president of Beijing Normal University.

Yuan sparked controversy earlier this year when he claimed hostile “enemy forces” were attempting to infiltrate university campuses in order to turn young minds against the party.

Books that attempted to spread western values in Chinese education needed to be banned, the minister added.

Liberal academics say the discussion and study of sensitive topics has become increasingly difficult under Xi Jinping, who is now entering his fourth year as Communist party chief."

Call and Response; Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/1/15

Tamara Venit Shelton, Chronicle of Higher Education; Call and Response:

"The Call to Action, its list of grievances and demands, has received a mixed response from the faculty here at the college. The majority, including me, have proffered support, but some professors worry that the student movement threatens academic freedom. Will new administrators, additional academic resources, and diversity training lead to more invasive measures that undermine our authority as experts and constrain our freedom of speech?

Those concerns are real. So are the concerns of marginalized students.

As Claremont McKenna rebuilds and moves forward, our faculty, administrators, and students will have to overcome resentment and skepticism. We will have to comprehend one another with humility and empathy.

As professors, we may have to rethink the space of the classroom — from a place under our authority to an environment that we co-create with our students. From my corner of campus, I find myself with a renewed commitment to teaching history and, through history, empathy.

I will not shrink from difficult conversations about race and power."

#WatchWhatYouSay; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/28/15

Frank Donoghue, Chronicle of Higher Education; #WatchWhatYouSay:

"Most academics are familiar with one or more well-­publicized incidents in which professors were suspended, were fired, or had a hiring contract rescinded because of controversial statements they had made on social media. That common denominator should give pause to all academics who value their jobs...

The courts may ultimately decide these cases, but as things stand now I think they illustrate that academic freedom is in danger of becoming a hollow concept as academics are increasingly active, if naïve, users of social media.

Even given the high cost to colleges of trying to remove a tenured professor, tenure obviously doesn’t provide adequate protection. What’s more, a smaller and smaller proportion of the higher-education teaching work force has tenure or is eligible for it; removing the tenure-ineligible is as simple as not renewing their contracts.

That demographic development, combined with the impossibility of containing social media, means that all academics must exercise extreme caution."

Chapel Hill Researcher’s Findings on Athletes’ Literacy Bring a Backlash; Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/24/14

Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education; Chapel Hill Researcher’s Findings on Athletes’ Literacy Bring a Backlash:

"Scholars at Chapel Hill say the way the university has responded to Ms. Willingham’s research has implications beyond her work. By halting it because of concerns over the anonymity of her subjects, and at the same time criticizing her findings, the university appears to be using the IRB as a tool to thwart her inquiry, say some faculty members.

“This looks vindictive,” says Frank R. Baumgartner, a distinguished professor of political science at Chapel Hill. “It puts the university in a defensive posture, where they could instead be taking the initiative and saying, Let’s have a national conversation to find the right balance between athletics and academics.”

Instead, says Mr. Baumgartner, the university’s attack on Ms. Willingham’s research has a “chilling effect” on any scholarly work that could make the university look bad.

Daniel K. Nelson, director of the university’s office of human-­research ethics, who oversees the institutional review boards, issued a statement saying he had not been pressured by university administrators into requesting that Ms. Willingham seek IRB approval.

He said it had simply become clear with the release of her research results that identifying details were in fact maintained in her data set. (Ms. Willingham has never publicly identified her research subjects.)"

Not-So-Great Expectations; Inside Higher Ed, 10/18/13

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed; Not-So-Great Expectations: "Politics aside, Slocum’s case and others like it in recent months raise an important question: In the age of social media and smartphones, what expectations – if any – should professors have for privacy for lectures and communications intended for students? Very little, said Slocum – but that’s “an acknowledgement of fact, of the way the Internet works, rather than a normative statement.” Privacy and intellectual property experts agreed, saying that such communications are fair game for students to share. Higher education has a complicated relationship with copyright and other ownership questions, experts said, due to historical concerns about academic freedom. Legally, however, most all of what professors say to students in lectures and in e-mails would pass the "fair use" doctrine test, making it O.K. for students to record, share and comment on even copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. “All of us have to figure out what our expectations should be in an age of smartphones and the Internet,” said Jessica Litman, a professor of law and information at the University of Michigan who specializes in intellectual property -- professors included."

For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30/13

Thomas Sullivan and Lawrence White, Chronicle of Higher Education; For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning: "Those and other cases prompted the AAUP in 2009 to issue a report observing that "the lower federal courts have so far largely ignored the Garcetti majority's reservation, posing the danger that, as First Amendment rights for public employees are narrowed, so too may be the constitutional protection for academic freedom at public institutions, perhaps fatally." In the past two years, however, the tide appears to have turned. Two recent decisions by federal appellate courts explicitly hold that the Garcetti standard does not apply in faculty-free-speech cases... The trend is encouraging. As a legal principle and sound postulate of institutional governance, academic freedom should be deemed to protect the expression of faculty views even when they are deemed by some to be unhelpful or provocatively stated. This is especially compelling given the uniqueness of our universities as marketplaces of ideas where we seek to discover new knowledge and understanding and make it available to others."

The NSA's next move: silencing university professors?; Guardian, 9/10/13

Jay Rosen, Guardian; The NSA's next move: silencing university professors? : "In commenting critically on a subject he is expert in, and taking an independent stance that asks hard questions and puts the responsibility where it belongs, Matthew Green is doing exactly what a university faculty member is supposed to be doing. By putting his thoughts in a blog post that anyone can read and link to, he is contributing to a vital public debate, which is exactly what universities need to be doing more often. Instead of trying to get Matthew Green's blog off their servers, the deans should be trying to get more faculty into blogging and into the public arena. Who at Johns Hopkins is speaking up for these priorities? And why isn't the Johns Hopkins faculty roaring about this issue? (I teach at New York University, and I'm furious.)"

Can a Professor Require Civility?; Inside Higher Ed, 11/19/12

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed; Can a Professor Require Civility? : "Robert Kreiser, senior program officer at the American Association of University Professors and adjunct history professor at George Mason University, said civility clauses resemble speech codes. The association rejects such codes as inconsistent with the principles of academic freedom. Although he acknowledged differences between Canadian and U.S. free speech laws, Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said it has long been established that student free speech can't be limited on U.S. public university campuses "in the name alone of 'conventions of decency.’ ” The precedent was set by 1973's Supreme Court case Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, which found that students can’t be punished for offensive speech that doesn’t disrupt campus order or interfere with others’ rights."

[Podcast] Professors Differ On Ethics Of Using WikiLeaks Cables; NPR's Morning Edition, 2/7/11

[Podcast] Jessica Deahl, NPR's Morning Edition; Professors Differ On Ethics Of Using WikiLeaks Cables:

"The WikiLeaks cable dump is almost universally considered a scholar's treasure trove. But, there is a debate within the academic community over the ethics of using the classified dispatches in the classroom."