The following is a press release from the Rutgers AAUP-AFT chapter. Rutgers AAUP-AFT has filed a lawsuit to force the Rutgers University administration to come clean about the huge sums of money it funnels to an athletics program that continually loses money. The suit, filed last Friday, asks a superior court judge to require the…
Note: I was writing this post before John Wilson posted his reaction to the Wolfe resignation. As should be clear, our perspectives differ. As the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed once more to rule on a case involving the consideration of race in college admissions, a wave of protest against campus racism by minority students…
This morning, the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling overturning a decision last year by a Chicago district official that had supported the right of Northwestern’s football players to unionize. The NLRB ruled that the case “would not promote stability in labor relations.” They wrote, “Our decision is primarily premised on a finding” that…
On April 25, Northwestern football players will vote on whether to form a union. But we may never know the results of the vote, because Northwestern University is fighting to have any union banned after the NLRB Regional Director ruled it could exist. In a legal brief appealing the ruling (pdf), Northwestern made a number…
For his piece in the September-October issue of Academe, William Vesterman looks back – way back – and learns contemporary lessons from early twentieth-century economist Thorstein Veblen. Vesterman, a professor at Rutgers, explains the shameful scandal of Mike Rice, the Rutgers basketball coach who was fired after his abusive practices became public. Unfortunately, the university’s…
Joel Shatzky is Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Cortland, where he taught from 1968-2005. He presently teaches at Kingsborough Community College. The following is cross-posted here with his permission. It originally appeared on Huffington Post and was picked up by Diane Ravitch’s blog. We re-posted it from there. On a recent trip to visit family and friends…
I’ve been tempted not to comment on the Penn State scandal simply because of the massive attention it’s already received and the fact that speaking out against child molestation is hardly a controversial stand. But the scandal is important precisely because of that attention, and what lessons are drawn from it. Henry A. Giroux and…
Today’s Chicago Tribune has a lengthy front-page article about how the University of Illinois’ general fund subsidizes the athletic program with $920,000 in free tuition waivers for student athletes. The University plans to reduce this number to $500,000 by 2016, but that’s clearly not enough. All universities should, at a minimum, adopt a very simple…