The AAUP chapters at Vanderbilt & Wash U have issued a joint statement denouncing the “State of Scholarship” report commissioned by their chancellors.
Please, let’s make this as widely read as the gaslighting to which it responds.
Pretty sure Frank Zappa would have hated Wilentz, though
The Vanderbilt report invokes Natalie Zemon Davis as an exemplar against Saidiya Hartman but (a) badly misreads both Davis and Hartman; and (b) appears to know nothing of NZD’s own intellectual biography despite the fact that some of the co-authors were once her colleagues at Princeton.
“We’re seeing the unfolding of a decades-long effort by right-wing think tanks to weaken the accreditation system..at stake is a systemic effort to make higher ed more vulnerable to political interference & to cost-cutting, quality reducing measures.”
Wouldn’t be surprised if the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Wash U invested more money in a report to take down the humanities than they ever actually invested in the humanists who work at their universities.
Vanderbilt Report co-author & former NYU provost Katherine E. Fleming says she's never heard of a major uni department being put in receivership b/c of an administration's disagreement with or dislike of the work it was doing. Perhaps she should hop on the 1 train and visit Columbia University.
Matt Seybold
“If this kind of austerity can happen at The News School, it can happen everywhere. Faculty all over the country need to be on guard. We need strong labor unions.”
— Jeremy Varon, New School AAUP President on @democracynow.org today.
👊🏾👊🏿👊🏼
@newschoolaaup.bsky.social
@higheredlabor.bsky.social
Reinstate Laid-Off Faculty at The New School. Sign our petition here 👉 forms.gle/NB9DCgVoonAg...
@aaup.org
That’s a Wrap!
What a POWERFUL Higher Ed Summit this week in Chicago centering the work of building a strong movement to defend the quality & promise of higher ed & our democracy in this pivotal moment.
LET’S GO!
#AAUP2026
👊🏽👊🏿👊🏻👊🏼👊🏾
“We can play a role in transforming democracy in this country.”
North Carolina Conference of the AAUP
Video
North Carolina Conference of the AAUP
Asheesh Kapur Siddique
On June 1, 2026, the New School announced the mass firing of 19 Full-Time Faculty and 68 staff members. These firings, along with coerced “voluntary” separations, early retirements, and step-downs sin...
1.) For non-Americans and/or younglings, HUAC = House Un-American Activities Committee.
2.) Natalie Zeamon Davis talks about the connection between having her passport confiscated and how she had to reorganize her early research in this essay for @nybooks.com: www.nybooks.com/online/2013/...
www.nybooks.com
The year was 1952. I had spent six months in France doing the first research for my PhD thesis on “Protestantism and the Printing Workers of Lyon.” Not long after my return, two gentlemen from the US ...
At the first biennial since President Donald Trump retook office, faculty members strategized about how to resist increasing political interference in their work and on their campuses.
"The administrators gave us a big pot of money to hire someone else to ask ChatGPT why your work sucks."
Karl Galle
New on Academe Blog:
jon ben-menachem
wow, just…wow
This reminds me of that scene in The Big Short when Steve Eisman asks, “Why are they confessing?” and Vinny Daniel says, “They’re not. They’re bragging.”
K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Boghossian, Katherine Fleming, and Sean Wilentz on what’s gone wrong in the humanities.
I had to stop at this point. I can’t take this this early in the morning.
wow, just…wow
This reminds me of that scene in The Big Short when Steve Eisman asks, “Why are they confessing?” and Vinny Daniel says, “They’re not. They’re bragging.”
K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Boghossian, Katherine Fleming, and Sean Wilentz on what’s gone wrong in the humanities.
BY KATIE RAINWATER In 2011, Eric Barron, the then-president of Florida State University, gave a presentation to FSU’s board of trustees. His talk concerned how Florida could adopt and exceed the “7…
