American copyright laws are absurd. Weird Al Yankovic, in “Word Crimes,” can parody Robin Thicke’s (with Pharrell) “Blurred Lines” but Thicke and Pharrell cannot base their own song on songs of the past without an explicit financial relationship. In other words, their creativity is controlled by money, as was affirmed by a jury yesterday: As…
University of Oklahoma President David Boren has shut down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, ordered students living there to leave, and expelled two students for leading a racist chant. These actions are a violation of the University of Oklahoma’s rules and, as FIRE points out, punishing these students is “almost certainly unconstitutional.” Some might wonder:…
I have somehow gotten on a daily advertising newsletter called Wowcher that is distributed by the UK newspaper The Daily Mail. I have not unsubscribed to the newsletter because with a frequency that has surprised me, it has included products that baffle me—products that I never knew existed or that have a purpose that completely…
Manfred, Frederick. Lord Grizzly. New York: McGraw, 1954. Frederick Manfred was a giant of a man who had giant literary ambitions that he never quite fulfilled. But, in the effort, he produced a diverse and very substantial body of work. For the most part, his fictions explore the history and culture of the West…
The item below is from the Campaign for America’s Future. It is re-posted with the permission of its Co-Director, Roger Hickey. The item provides a succinct description of how the agreement is being shaped to corporate priorities. Although it does not address the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on academic institutions both here and abroad,…
While The New York Times reports on action by the University of Oklahoma, kicking out Sigma Alpha Epsilon for a racist chant, a Daily Kos blogger argues that the chant has roots elsewhere, that there’s a pervasive though hidden racism throughout the fraternity and, by implication, elsewhere. No, not by implication. The blogger reproduces pictures of lynchings…
The decision by the Board of Trustees of Sweet Briar College to close its doors on August 25 shocked the American higher education community. In announcing its decision, Sweet Briar officials noted the lack of interest from applicants to women’s colleges like Sweet Briar, a declining interest in liberal arts colleges, and a growing unwillingness…
I am posting this testimony as a companion post to my earlier posting of the testimony of Ohio Conference President, John McNay, to the Ohio Senate Committee responsible for higher-education appropriations [https://academeblog.org/2015/03/05/ohio-conference-president-provides-senate-testimony-on-the-decline-in-state-support-administrate-bloat-the-cost-of-intercollegiate-athletics-and-faculty-workload/]. Although this is testimony on the broader budget, you can see that the emphases in the statements complement each other, in some ways…