academic freedom

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    Block on Israel Boycott

    Byuclafaculty

    As expected – see earlier posts – now that UCLA has reopened, Chancellor Block issued a statement on the Israel boycott issue: As one of the world’s leading public research universities, UCLA has a steadfast commitment to the principles of academic freedom and open dialogue. In their pursuit of knowledge, our faculty and students must be free to collaborate and communicate with scholars around the world. Institutions throughout the Middle East are no exception, providing a valuable and essential range of ideas and perspectives that should not be excluded. Limiting academic debate and research violates our principles of independent inquiry…

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    The GSEIS “Problem” Continues

    Byuclafaculty

    Inside Higher Ed continues its coverage of the controversy in a course at GSEIS involving… well, it’s not quite clear what is involved, despite the lengthy article.  It does seem like the kind of development that needs some Academic Senate review.  [Excerpt] For the first time since graduate students staged a sit-in during a class they said exemplified what’s wrong with race relations at the University of California at [sic] Los Angeles, the course met again late last week. But in an apparent attempt at compromise between the aggrieved students and the instructor, its configuration was changed – raising concerns…

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    Sit-In at GSEIS

    Byuclafaculty

    A complicated story of a sit-in at a class at GS&EIS is emerging.  There were earlier reports in the Daily Bruin [see links below] and elsewhere.  This one – excerpted below from Inside Higher Ed – gives the clearest description: …(S)ome graduate students are weighing in on what they see as a climate of hostility toward minority students, both in the Graduate School of Education’s Information’s Social Science and Comparative Education division and at UCLA as a whole. But the grad students’ interruption of a class session with a sit-in has other graduate students questioning their tactics — and some say…

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    Reminder that Your Emails Aren’t Private

    Byuclafaculty

    The Daily Bruin carries a story today about a demand for a UCLA professors emails. Excerpt: Two state senators have accused UCLA of withholding the records of a professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences from the public, the most recent development in a conflict that has lasted about three years.  The two California senators – Minority Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) and Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) – started corresponding with UCLA about Professor John Froines’s public records earlier this year, when they noticed UCLA had not disclosed all of Froines’s emails in a past records request.Controversy over the records…

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    Let he who is without Zinn…

    Byuclafaculty

    Daniels cast the first stone and now he is being castigated. From Inside Higher Ed today comes this story of activities at Purdue:This summer, the Associated Press revealed that Mitch Daniels, while governor of Indiana, tried to discourage the use of the books of the late Howard Zinn, a leftist historian, in the state. In a new effort to defend Zinn’s legacy, scholars have announced plans for a “read in” of Zinn’s work, to take place at Purdue University, where Daniels is now the president…Full story at:http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/09/17/plan-honor-howard-zinn-purdue-university

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    Smile. You are likely on cellphone camera in class

    Byuclafaculty

    Mitt Romney was surprised during the 2012 election when someone made a video of his controversial 47% remarks at a supposedly private affair. Classrooms are even less private with cellphones abundant yet apparently some faculty are surprised to find themselves on YouTube or elsewhere when they say things they shouldn’t.  You can raise questions of academic freedom, legalities of surreptitious recordings, etc. But the world is what it is and a cautionary tale can be found below:Inside Higher Ed, among other sources, picked up the story of a Michigan State U professor who ranted against Republicans: Michigan State University has removed…

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    Various UC Campuses Cleared of Anti-Semitism Charges

    Byuclafaculty

    Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday that UC campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz had been cleared of charges of allowing an anti-Semitic atmosphere due to anti-Israel student activities.  The campuses received letters from the US Dept. of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) clearing them on free speech grounds.  An article appeared later in the LA Times indicating the same conclusion was reached for UC-Irvine. The Inside Higher Ed article is at http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/08/28/education-dept-rejects-charges-anti-jewish-bias-u-calif-campuses The LA Times article is at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-uc-fed-probe-20130829,0,936811.story You can find an official letter to one of the campuses from OCR through the first link.  But the unofficial…

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    Regents to Consider Modifying Code of Faculty Conduct to Protect Academic Freedom

    Byuclafaculty

    In an earlier post, before the full Regents’ agenda for July was posted, we noted there was an item involving a modification of the faculty code of conduct.  It appears that the main modification to be proposed is explicit protection for faculty to comment on institutional UC policies.  Specifically, there is proposed explicit recognition of the “freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action when acting as a member of the faculty whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance.” The report on this matter can be found at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/jul13/e3.pdf.

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    One Suspects We Will Be Hearing More About This Issue

    Byuclafaculty

    Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/20/12 UCLA Faculty Leader Found to Have Wronged Professor to Appease Jewish Group By Peter Schmidt A faculty panel at the University of California at Los Angeles has admonished the chairman of the university’s Academic Senate for violating the rights of an associate professor who had been accused by an outside advocacy group of misusing his position to call for a boycott of Israel.  In a letter issued this month, the UCLA Academic Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom held that the Senate’s chairman, Andrew F. Leuchter, was wrong to have told the advocacy group and the…