Academic Freedom Archives

Academic Freedom

Israeli Philosophy Community Calls For Rejection Of Proposed Ethics Code

Over 80 Israeli philosophers—the vast majority of the Israeli philosophical community—have issued a statement urging their government’s Council for Higher Education to reject a proposed academic ethics code. (more…)

Philosophers From Women’s Colleges Oppose Eliminating Philosophy At Mills

Philosophers at Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard—all women’s colleges—have authored a letter opposing the proposed elimination of the philosophy department at Mills College. (more…)

Is Academic Freedom in Israel Threatened by a Philosopher-Authored Ethics Code? (Updated with English Translation of Proposed Code)

Israel’s Minister of Education has proposed the adoption of a code of ethics for academics that some worry poses a threat to the academic freedom of professors there. The code was authored by Asa Kasher, the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair in Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice at Tel Aviv University. (more…)

Petition Launched to Preserve Philosophy at Mills College

In the wake of news reported last Wednesday that the administration and Board of Trustees of Mills College plans to eliminate the school’s philosophy department and fire its tenured faculty, a petition has been launched to “Uphold Principles of Academic Freedom and Preserve the Philosophy and Journalism Departments at Mills College.” (more…)

Notre Dame Philosophers Issue Statement On Threats To Philosophy at Univ. of St. Thomas Houston

In response to news that philosophy programs at the University of St. Thomas in Houston may be shut down and tenured philosophers relieved of their positions, members of the University of Notre Dame Department of Philosophy have issued the following statement, which was sent in to Daily Nous by Professor Thérèse Cory: (more…)

Texas A&M President Regrets “Contributions… to misunderstandings”

Last week, Tommy Curry, professor of philosophy at Texas A & M University, began receiving racist hate mail and death threats as a result of an opinion piece by a conservative pundit who framed remarks of his in a misleading way. Surprisingly, the president of his university, Michael K. Young, had been taken in by this deception and publicly condemned Curry’s remark..

A Statement of Support for Tommy Curry

In response to the news that Tommy Curry, professor of philosophy at Texas A & M University, has been receiving racist hate mail and death threats owing to a mispresentation of his words by pundit Rod Dreher, and that the president of his university, Michael K. Young, publicly reiterated this misrepresentation, graduate students from across his university have autho..

Philosophy Professor Receiving Death Threats (updated with transcript, letter from colleagues)

Tommy Curry, professor of philosophy at Texas A & M University, has been receiving racist hate mail and death threats in the wake of an opinion piece at a conservative website that frames remarks of his in a misleading way—and among those apparently misled, it now appears, is Texas A & M president Michael K. Young. (more…)

Philosopher’s Article On Transracialism Sparks Controversy (Updated with response from author)

An article in the current issue of the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia has created such a controversy over the past several days that the members of its board of associate editors have now issued an apology for publishing it. (more…)

51 Years Teaching Philosophy Is Not Good Enough, says Accreditor

Professor Katherine Butler has taught philosophy at Wayne State College (WSC) in Wayne, Nebraska, for 51 years. It doesn’t look like she’ll be doing it again, though. It’s not that she is retiring. Rather, Higher Learning Commission, the accrediting agency that evaluates the school, has issued new guidelines that disqualify her from teaching philosophy. (more…)

Anti-Abortion Philosophy Lecturer Fired

Stéphane Mercier, the visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium whose courses were suspended recently because of a lecture he gave in which he argued against a right to abortion, has been fired. (more…)

University Suspends Philosopher After Lesson On Abortion (updated)

Stéphane Mercier, a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, was suspended from his position, and had his classes cancelled, following a lesson he gave on the topic of abortion. (more…)

AAUP Issues Report On Adjunct Philosophy Professor Allegedly Fired For High Standards

Nathaniel Bork was an adjunct philosophy professor at the Community College of Aurora (CCA) for six years when he was fired a few weeks into the Fall 2016 semester. As reported here last November, Bork claimed that he was fired for refusing to lower the educational standards in his courses and threatening to complain about curricular changes (the “Gateway to Success..

Academics Author Statement on Freedom of Thought and Expression

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Cornel R. West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School have jointly authored “Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression,” a public statement in favor of civil discourse and respectful disagreement on u..

The Ghost of Senator Joe McCarthy Haunts a Philosophy Graduate Student (guest post)

The following is a guest post * by Charles H. Seibert, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. It is about his experiences as a politically-minded graduate student in the 1960s—and the professional consequences that followed. (more…)

Philosopher’s Comments On Immigration Cause Stir On Campus

Remarks on immigration by Dan Demetriou, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Morris, have been a subject of controversy at the school recently, according to Inside Higher Ed. (more…)

SUNY Stony Brook’s “Alt-Right” Philosophy PhD

SUNY Stony Brook philosophy PhD Jason Reza Jorjani, who is now a lecturer in humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and editor-in-chief of what appears to be an alt-right (white supremacist) publishing firm, Arktos Media, is demanding an apology from the philosophy faculty at Stony Brook, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The apology demand is prompted b..

The Anti-Authoritarian Academic Code of Conduct (updated)

People are wondering how authoritarian the United States government will become under a Trump administration. There’s no way to know for sure. Perhaps the answer is: no more than it already is. Or perhaps Trump, who seems to be some combination of much less knowledgeable of and much less respectful of the limits of executive power than any previous U.S. president (e..

Philosophers on the Professor Watchlist (Updated)

The “Professor Watchlist” is a website listing professors who someone has thought “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The list was created by Turning Point, a student-oriented non-profit organization which takes as its mission “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fi..

Philosopher Refuses to Hand Over Passport; His Talks Cancelled

The other day, Jonathan Webber, a philosopher at Cardiff University, sent out a series of tweets detailing how the University of Hertfordshire, at which he was supposed to give a pair of talks, required he provide a scan of his passport in advance. (more…)

Was A Philosophy Professor Fired For Refusing To Lower His Standards?

Colleges in Colorado have the option of offering “guaranteed transfer” (GT) courses. Standards for these courses are set by statewide requirements called the “GT Pathways Requirements”. The idea is that students taking GT courses at, say, a community college, are getting the kind of quality education that students at the state’s major universities are receiving, so ..

Update on the Persecution of Academics in Turkey

The Turkish government, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has continued its crackdown on those it deems enemies of the state in the wake of an attempted coup this past July. According to The Independent, over 70,000 people have been arrested during this time. (more…)

The Autonomy of University Ethics Centers

Wednesday afternoon, Gordon Hull, associate professor of philosophy at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and director of the school’s Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, put up a post on the Center’s webpage about the recent police shooting of an unarmed black man, Keith L. Scott (see the bottom of this post for that text). (more…)

Barthold Retaliation Case Settled

This past April I reported that Lauren Barthold, associate professor of philosophy at Gordon College, a Christian liberal arts college in Massachusetts, had filed a lawsuit against the college for retaliating against her for her public statements (such as a letter to the editor of a newspaper) disagreeing with college president Michael Lindsay over whether federal c..

Which Ideas Are Students Protected From? Which Are Faculty Fearful to Defend?

Here are some empirical claims about higher education in the United States. In comparison to 100 years ago:

There are fewer or weaker institutional, social, and material obstacles to non-white-male people entering academia.
Academics today regularly and with institutional approval study a greater number of topics, including topics previously thought taboo or unwo..