A New Blog on Liberty, and Upcoming Events

Erica Goldberg, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Penn State Law School, has started a new blog about liberty and legal issues. She and I engaged in a back-and-forth discussion in the comments on her first post about the meaning of liberty and its application to restrictive student organizations. And I wanted to let everyone know…

The Shutdown of WZRD at NEIU

On June 29, 2012, the administration at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in Chicago shut down the student-run broadcast radio station, WZRD, and banned the student DJs from the airwaves. It was an act of censorship without due process that ignored NEIU’s policies, violated the First Amendment, and broke a state law protecting freedom of college…

Limits and Freedom: One Important Dialogue

At the end of an article of his published yesterday in The New York Times, Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) says: Students can’t learn how to navigate democracy and engage with their fellow citizens if they are forced to think twice before they speak their mind. Well… actually they can, and…

An Interview with Wayne Lanter

Wayne Lanter retired from Southwestern Illinois College and wrote a book about his 25 years of experience with union battles at one of the most important sites of faculty labor activism. Lanter’s book, Defending the Citadel, details the ups and downs of these labor fights. John K. Wilson interviewed Lanter via email for Academe Blog…

Taking College Out of the Teacher-Training Process

”I don’t think the higher education programs are going away, and that wouldn’t be my intention.” So says Shael Polakow-Suransky of New York City’s Department of Education. Nice, but Education Departments are not likely to be too happy with the intention of moving teacher training from certification programs in colleges and universities to in-house programs (though…

CUNY Pathways: Waiting for Leadership

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein’s message to the faculty about the Queensborough Community College uproar. That it doesn’t sit well with many faculty members should be obvious from even a cursory reading (Pathways, for those who don’t know, is a top-down CUNY initiative aimed…

Queensborough Community College Faculty Senate Resolutions

As promised: Subject: Resolutions adopted 10-9-12   ACADEMIC SENATE QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE, CUNY Resolutions adopted as College Policy October 9, 2012   I.          RESOLUTION IN AFFIRMATION OF QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE REMAINING A VIABLE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION Whereas, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York is obliged to honor its legal obligations and the agreements it…