Academic Connections, International
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Café Cook 14
A recent op-ed article in Inside Higher Education, written by an Amherst professor and a Cambridge, MA lawyer, highlights a growing a concern of campus observers. The article alleges (read for yourself at this link) that diversity requirements at the University of Massachuesetts at Amherst demonstrates a troubling shift from "proscription of speech to prescription of political attitudes."
Whether that’s true or not is up for you to judge, but it and the comments it attracted makes for provacative reading. Indeed there have been a lot of provacative reads in recent times that seems to be signaling important shifts in administration attitudes on particular campuses.
The reports seem to be coming along two main lines—some we have pointed out in earlier editions of Café Cook and in other publications—and those lines are: 1) diversity and minority demands for a “more welcoming environment” (including affirmative action) and how adminstrations are dealing with it; 2) rape and sexual harrassment on campus.
Both of these broad social justice issues are important in and of themselves, but are also important because they have implications for your : academic freedom, freedom of expression, due process under the law and more. We know you want to be informed and want to be able to talk about these issues—knowing what you’re talking about. Because you may have missed some of this we’ve organized things for you. Hopefully this will make it a little simpler and will save you some time.
So you can dig into the issues more deeply we have collected articles that you can peruse. When you click on these links they will open a new window or tab:
—>Link to articles on minority demands for a more welcoming environment.
—>Link to articles regarding rape and sexual harrassment on campus
—>Link to articles on how all this affects academic freedom, freedom of expression, due process and so on.