2014 Through the Academe Blog: May

A May Day reprinting of an article by Jack Rasmus concluded: That condition of the 100 million plus working families in America today, International Labor Day 2014, is as lamentable as the accelerating accrual of income and wealth by the 1% is disgusting. Of course, the two trends are not mutually exclusive but directly related.…

The Asbestos Controversy at Kilgore College: A Follow-Up on the Cover-Up, Contention, and Attempted Intimidation by Gunfire

This post is a follow-up to my earlier post, “Obfuscation of Long-Term Asbestors Issue at Texas College; Governance Issues Exposed” [https://academeblog.org/2014/11/28/obfuscation-of-long-term-asbestos-issues-at-texas-college-issues-with-governance-exposed/]. Carlos Griffin, a member of the Board of Trustees of Kilgore College has been at the center of the efforts to understand the problems with the removal of asbestos from many of the buildings…

Like It or Not, We Are All in This Together

On December 12, Myles Udland reported the following in an article for Business Insider: “Consumer confidence is at an almost 8-year high. “On Friday, the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer confidence reading for December came in at 93.8, the best reading since January 2007 and a complete blowout of expectations. “According to Paul Dales at Capital…

2014 Through the Academe Blog: April

“April is the… ” nope, not going there! Michael DeCesare posted a letter from women faculty at Merrimack College to the president of the University of Southern Maine that includes this: We write to request that you rescind the cuts you have made to the fulltime faculty in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social…

2014 Through the Academe Blog: March

[For the previous month, February, go here.] Hank Reichman began the month by considering the decline of shared governance at Ft. Lewis College, exemplified by a change in course structure in relation to creits: shared governance is the issue at FLC and it is an issue that should concern faculty everywhere.  To be sure, the…

2014 Through the Academe Blog: February

This review of the past year, month by month, started with January, found here. A guest post by Cecil Canton toward the beginning of the month describes the “cultural taxation” faced by faculty from underrepresented groups, “a way to describe the unique burden placed on ethnic minority faculty in carrying out our responsibility for service…

A.A.U.P. Salaita Letter to Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I received permission from Gregory Scholtz, Director, A.A.U.P. Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance, to release this letter: December 30, 2014 Dr. Phyllis Wise Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Swanlund Administration Building 601 East John Street Champaign, Illinois 61820 Dear Chancellor Wise: The approval and December 23 release by the UIUC Senate Committee…

The Debate over Student Debt

This is a chart from the Federal Reserve Board in New York representing household debt in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2014: Over the last decade, student debt has clearly increased both in raw dollars and as a percentage of household debt. The implications of that increase have, however, been much less clear…

2014 Through the Academe Blog: January

One of the first contributions to the Academe blog this year was Hank Reichman’s “How NOT to Oppose the Academic Boycott of Israel.” He wrote: Clearly, college and university presidents have the right to speak out on issues of public concern, especially as these relate to higher education.  And while their statements may or may not represent…