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AAUP Watch
The AAUP has yet to take a stand on the case of SUNY Fredonia philosophy professor Stephen Kershnar, who was denied promotion to full professor for criticizing the university in the local media. Kershnar's case is a strikingly clearcut example of how university administrators can violate academic freedom--not to mention First Amendment rights--by punishing a professor's free and protected expression ... but the AAUP is nowhere to be seen. The organization's silence on the matter of this conservative professor's expressive rights does not speak well for it. (This blog assumes that the "roger bowen" who commented so disturbingly about Kershnar's situation at InsideHigherEd is not the AAUP's Roger Bowen--though others have assumed differently.)
So what has the AAUP been up to lately? It's hard to say, though Roger Bowen's comments on the Kevin Barrett controversy are encouraging. Noting that faculty can express any opinion they want outside the classroom, Bowen observes that the classroom is very far from a stage for professorial opinion: "with academic freedom comes academic responsibility," he said. "And that requires them to teach the truth of their discipline, and the truth does not include conspiracy theories, or flat Earth theories, or Holocaust denial theories." Bowen sounds an awful lot like ACTA president Anne Neal there. And that's a good thing.
UPDATE: SUNY Fredonia has promoted Kershnar, after FIRE launched a media campaign defending Kershnar's rights. The AAUP's silence on this major academic freedom case now makes the organization look worse than flat-footed--it makes it look irrelevant.
Posted by acta online on August 14, 2006 at August 14, 2006 03:25 AM
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