Universities & college

Independent, UK -  Across colleges in America, faculty and students alike have hit back at new protest restrictions. To many the new rules threaten freedom of speech — and the freedom to think, both central to university life. This semester, some of the most visible demonstrations have involved professors speaking up for the right to protest itself...To some professors, the protest restrictions are also a labor issue. 

Colleges have been granting tenure to fewer professors, and facing pressure in some areas to do away with it altogether. Legislatures in several states have taken an interest in how topics around race, gender and history are taught. Protest guidelines handed down by administrators are another way the faculty's say in university affairs is being diminished, some professors say...

“We have to, as faculty, organize and demand the sort of shared governance that gives us a right to review and challenge these policies,” said Todd Wolfson, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and the president of the American Association of University Professors. “They’re not made by people coming out of the academic arm of our institutions.”