Some reminders about events and resources available to AAUP members:

AAUP Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education
With its thematic focus this year on the rights and freedoms of students, the June 14–18 conference in Washington, DC, honors the fiftieth anniversary of the Joint Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students, issued by the AAUP along with four other groups in 1967. Conference presentation topics include historical and contemporary perspectives on student activism, the impact of digital media on student rights and freedoms, race and diversity on campus, the rights of graduate student workers, and the tension between faculty and student rights.

Friday's luncheon speaker will be Ibram X. Kendi, assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida and winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

Learn more about and register for the conference at https://www.aaup.org/2017-conference. Early-bird registration rates are available until April 15.

Webinar: Academic Freedom in the Age of Trump, February 28
This webinar addresses academic freedom concerns for faculty in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Current threats to academic freedom include the Professor Watchlist website and legislative and gubernatorial attacks on individual faculty members, course offerings, governing boards, the institution of tenure, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities. The webinar will provide an overview of the concept of academic freedom, describe recent attacks on academic freedom, and discuss how you can defend it.

Presenter Hans-Joerg Tiede is a senior program officer in the AAUP's department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance. The webinar is offered free of charge and registration is limited to AAUP members and field staff. Register at https://www.aaup.org/event/webinar-academic-freedom-age-trump.

March 15 Awards Deadline
Consider making a nomination for an AAUP award recognizing individuals or administrators and trustees. The nominations deadline for all awards is March 15. Full guidelines and application procedures appear on the AAUP website at https://www.aaup.org/our-programs/awards.

Career Center
The AAUP has an online career center to help colleges and universities connect with qualified applicants. Whether you are filling a vacancy in your department or seeking a new position, this resource is an easy way to broaden your search. To learn more or create an account, visit https://www.aaup.org/career-center.

My Penn State colleagues looked with horror at the police tape across my office door.

I had been opening mail at my desk that afternoon in August 2010 when a dusting of white powder fell from the folds of a letter. I dropped the letter, held my breath and slipped out the door as swiftly as I could, shutting it behind me. First I went to the bathroom to scrub my hands.

Then I called the police.

It turned out to be cornstarch, not anthrax. And it was just one in a long series of threats I’ve received since the late 1990s, when my research illustrated the unprecedented nature of global warming, producing an upward-trending temperature curve whose shape has been likened to a hockey stick.

All of this must ring familiar to professors who find themselves on a watchlist or are facing online harassment for what they teach, write, or say. I’ve faced hostile investigations by politicians, demands that I be fired from my job, threats against my life, and even threats against my family. I I thought those threats would have diminished as human-caused climate change has become recognized as the overwhelming scientific consensus and as climate science began to receive the support of the federal government. But with the broader political climate that has accompanied the Trump administration, my colleagues and I are facing a renewed onslaught of intimidation, from inside and outside the government.

The AAUP is collecting stories about online harassment of faculty to get a sense of the prevalence of such instances at colleges and universities around the country. Submit an incident here.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stories-of-targeted-harassment-of-faculty?link_id=1&can_id=6117e4ea23e3cb8599322a9da81ddf68&source=email-a-professor-threatened-a-story-of-an-attack-on-science&email_referrer=a-professor-threatened-a-story-of-an-attack-on-science___167555&email_subject=the-fate-of-science-and-academia-hang-in-the-balance

One thing is different now than when I faced similar attacks nearly a decade ago: a very rapid and concerted pushback against the disinformation and misinformation. As a member of the AAUP and a steadfast supporter of the fight for academic freedom, I am heartened by the strong response that faculty have taken against some of the most dangerous elements of this new watchlist and science-denying culture.

That’s not to say that obstacles don’t remain. We face an unprecedented assault on science by the government that should be supporting and promoting it. The disrespect that the nominee to lead the EPA, Scott Pruitt, displays for science is deeply distressing. And he is just one of a group of ominously anti-science advisors and notorious climate change deniers who now hold key positions in the Trump administration.

I worry that younger scientists might be deterred from going into climate research (or any topic where scientific findings can prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests). As someone who has weathered many attacks, I would urge these scientists to have courage.

The fate of science and academia hang in the balance.

Michael Mann
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
Penn State

Not since the era of witch hunts and “red baiting” has the American university faced so great a threat from government. How is the university to function when a president’s administration blurs the distinction between fact and fiction by asserting the existence of “alternative facts”? How can the university turn a blind eye to what every historian knows to be a key instrument of modern authoritarian regimes: the capacity to dress falsehood up as truth and reject the fruits of reasoned argument, evidence and rigorous verification?
The atmosphere of suspicion and insecurity created by the undermining of truth provides the perfect environment for President Trump’s recent actions on immigration. The American university’s future, indeed its most fundamental reason for being, is imperiled by a government that constructs walls on the Mexican border, restricts Muslim immigrants and denigrates the idea of America as a destination for refugees.
Although American universities did not always welcome the huge influx of refugees after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, that intellectual migration transformed a provincial and second-rate higher education system into the finest in the world. Manufacturing may have fled our borders, but American higher education remains a powerful and competitive force, a destination for students and scholars everywhere and a vital engine of employment and economic health. An astonishingly large percentage of graduate students and professors in science today are foreigners and immigrants.
I am a Jewish immigrant who came here as part of a family that was stateless, and my deep patriotism is rooted in that experience. I benefited from American humanitarianism, and I have worked my entire life to give back to this country. An America inhospitable to immigrants and foreigners, a place of fear and danger instead of refuge, is unthinkable in the context of the nation’s history and founding principles. If a more practical argument is required, think of the consequences for the quality and future of our colleges and universities, and their highly prized superiority in science and engineering.Moreover, what will become of the major government agencies of scientific research, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation? Will their research agendas be manipulated to fit Mr. Trump’s view of reality? Will there be a continuing erosion of support for basic research as opposed to research that contributes to some commercial product? The greatest advances in medicine were a result of research conducted after World War II, motivated exclusively to enable humankind to better understand nature, not to come up with a new drug.

What, then, are we, the leaders of our institutions of higher education, to do when faced with a president who denies facts, who denies science? Is it best to stand by when he repudiates climate science and revives the credibility of discredited theories about autism? Facts and photographs did not stop him from rejecting the evidence regarding the election results or the size of crowds at his inauguration. He has undermined public confidence in the electoral system. In the face of this, standing up for the truth — which is, after all, higher education’s business — might appear to be an act of political partisanship. But this is not about political parties. It is about the proper role of the academy in a troubling time.
American colleges and universities, public and private, are properly seen as nonpartisan elements in civil society, committed to research and teaching in a manner that transcends ordinary politics. But to succeed, these institutions must ensure that academic freedom and the highest standards of scholarship prevail. This means respect for the rules of evidence, rigorous skepticism and the honoring of the distinction between truth and falsehood.
Doing this has never been easy. Institutions of higher education are dependent on state and federal funding, including tax exemptions, research funds and scholarship support. Pressures from within also exist, often inspired by students and faculty members seeking to create a consensus of belief that can marginalize disagreement and dissent. Nevertheless, the key to the astonishing success and international superiority of the American university, particularly in science and engineering, has been its resilient commitment to freedom and nondiscrimination, and its respect for truth, no matter how uncomfortable.
The presidents of our colleges and universities must defend the principles that have enabled institutions of higher education to flourish. These are freedom and tolerance, and openness to individuals no matter their national origin or religion. The actions and spirit of the new administration threaten the American university’s core values.
The voices of our leaders in higher education must be heard in opposition. The cause is not partisan. The cause is a democracy where citizens of the entire world are welcome, minorities are protected and dissent respected. Such a democracy is the only context in which research and learning and the pursuit of knowledge can thrive. The time to act together is upon us. The world must have no doubt about where the American university stands.  - Leon Botstein



Leon Botstein is the president of Bard College. This is an article from the On Campus series at www.nytimes.com/opinion/on-campus