Arkansas profs champion academic freedom as bipartisan cause

Most recently in June, I wrote about the faculty lawsuit against the University of Arkansas System to protect academic freedom, as the university tries to cut back on tenure protection for both past and future hires.  The case is tracked by Professor Josh Silverstein, at his blog, Jurisophia, where the most recent filing is a September reply brief in support of defendants' motion to dismiss.

I had lost track in my inbox of this short segment (click box below) from Fox News in June, below, in which Arkansas named plaintiffs, my friend and mentor Professor-Attorney Tom Sullivan among them, schooled anchors on how academic freedom and tenure should be a bipartisan cause.



The case is Palade, Borse, and Sullivan v. Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas System, No. 4:19-cv00379-JM (E.D. Ark. complaint filed May 31, 2019).

I've freshly endured my own reminder at UMass Law of how readily academics turn on each other.  As I nurse the knife wound in my own back, I find myself re-sensitized to how American university administrators today exploit the ruthless faculty penchant for self-preservation to further the faculty's own fall and the rise of bureaucratic hegemony in its place.  Ultimately if indirectly, the most devastating impact of this dynamic is visited on the students who should be the beneficiaries of the educational mission.