An Interest, Scholarly and Otherwise, in Rare Photos

BY MARTIN KICH The publication of a new biography of the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, written by his now elderly “step-sister,” Annye Anderson, with the assistance of Preston Lauterbach. As with just about everything else associated with Johnson, his blood relation to Annye Anderson is actually not quite…

image of N95 surgical mask lying on a table next to another mask

Why America’s Anti-Science and Anti-Intellectual Attitudes Doom It to Coronavirus “Pearl Harbor”

BY JUAN COLE Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and editor-in-chief of the Informed Comment blog, from which this is reposted with permission.  The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this…

Diet and Expert Knowledge

BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this month the AAUP released an important statement, In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, prepared by Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.  The statement has now been endorsed by these organizations: American Federation of Teachers American Historical Association Association of American Colleges and Universities American Society of Journalists and…

MIT, David Koch, and Jeffrey Epstein

BY HANK REICHMAN In The Future of Academic Freedom I devote a chapter to the baleful influence on academic freedom of colleges’ and universities’ increasing reliance on external donors, many of whom act on political motivations potentially detrimental to institutional values.  Some of the possible pitfalls may be seen in how the Massachusetts Institute of…

Bolsonaro Attacks Science

BY HANK REICHMAN In April I posted to this blog an item, “‘Professor Watchlist’ Goes International,” which reported, among other things, that a member of parliament from right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s party had called on students to send her videos of instructors “indoctrinating” them into leftist ideologies and that Bolsonaro himself shared one such…