This "First Principles" report begins with a brief assessment of the state of leisure in America today, before turning to the traditional understanding of the concept. In reconsidering the classical notion that leisure requires education, or, more radically, that the purpose of education is leisure, the report will focus especially on…

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on…

How much of academia is infiltrated by activists? Some conservatives claim that "neo-Marxism" and its sister paradigms like feminist pedagogy, post-structuralism, and post-modernism have long infected certain departments in the humanities and social sciences. Those paradigms have now spread to more disciplines and funding committees.…

Over the last 3 years, the advocacy organization Speech First has filed six lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of bias response teams on the grounds that they violate free speech. Bias response teams are university-wide committees that respond to reports of racially charged incidents on college campuses to promote institutional goals of…

This book proposes some insights and ideas into how education might be humanized. The chapters inform, provoke, and guide further inquiries into imagining and actualizing human education. It presents the view that education should be primarily understood as human education, which offers universal good for the entire planet. It centres around the…

Democratisation in Turkey collapsed in the wake of the 2016 failed military coup and the crackdown that followed, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launching a widespread rollback of academic and other liberties, systematically purging civic institutions of political opponents and critics that significantly harmed intellectuals, students, and…

Some state legislatures have introduced a rash of bills designed to control how K-12 teachers discuss so-called 'divisive issues,' such as racism, sexism, and privilege. This legislation has prompted substantial news coverage on the impact of these laws. Sidelined in this discourse are the perspectives of teachers. This mixed methods study seeks…

Whiteness is the foundation of racism and racial violence within higher education institutions. It is deeply embedded in the ideologies and organizational structures of colleges and universities that guide practices, policies, and research. The purpose of this book is not to simply uncover these practices but, rather, to intentionally center the…

Authentic assessments are designed to evaluate knowledge and skills that are relevant for students' life beyond university, emphasising practical, applied skills. They offer an alternative to assessments that don't explicitly foster transferability of skills. The present study examined undergraduate student perceptions of authentic and traditional…

Some leaders in higher education have called for "institutional neutrality." The sudden prominence of the concept in discussions over how universities should handle controversial issues warrants an attempt to recover the history of the concept. This essay is in part an effort to trace where the idea came from, but the author also is…

Industry-funded research can prevent academic freedom from thriving at universities. It can also lead to misleading research that harms consumers. This book chapter focuses on how corporations sometimes use methods that contribute to the corruption of science and includes descriptions of several cases that occurred at universities. Some of the…

A January 2024 survey found that 72 percent of parents had considered a new school for their children in the past year. And in 2025, Texas and Tennessee are poised to become the next states to enact education savings account (ESA) programs, potentially giving millions more students the education options that their parents want for them. As a…

This statement, an expansion and elaboration of the principles of racial and gender equity espoused by the AAUP for more than fifty years, was approved by the Association's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the Committee on Gender and Sexuality in the Academic Profession, the Committee on Historically Black Institutions and Scholars of…

Academic freedom has a long, complex history in Canada and elsewhere. For reasons that are at times justifiable and at times indefensible, academic freedom has been constrained in a variety of ways, and not only by institutional or political authorities. Using illustrations drawn from Canada and beyond, this article tracks the history and progress…

Despite mounting evidence, universities continue to insist that academic freedom -- one of the most cherished of all tertiary values -- remains an immutable part of institutional life. After all, how can the modern university retain its image as a bastion of free, critical thought if academies are muzzled? Still, as the manageriat likes to remind…