The terrible murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, seemed, initially and superficially, an all-too mundanely tragic event: a long-festering dispute over parking spaces led a guy to kill his neighbors with a gun. On the surface, the only unusual detail seemed to be that the guy had killed three people. Usually…
All of these items have been distributed by Business Insider. Let’s start with a story about the unsuccessful attempt by SpaceX to land a rocket on an platform in the ocean [www.businessinsider.sg/spacex-rocket-crash-landing-vine-images-2015-2/]. Here is a photo of the crash: And here is the opening line of the article that immediately follows the photo: “SpaceX launched…
The following is the text of a letter to the Executive Committee of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, written by David Ransel, Robert F. Byrne Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, and signed by 126 134 142 additional scholars in the field. The complete list of signatories follows the text. …
One of the great battles ongoing in American higher education centers on the continued vitality and relevance of a liberal arts education. Nearly every American has seen some video variation of an underemployed liberal arts graduate at a fast food window asking: “Would you like biggie-sized fries with that?” Historically, the defense of the…
The decision of Marquette University to seek the revocation of the continuous tenure, an increasingly common oxymoron, of Associate Professor John McAdams merits academic freedom scrutiny. Whenever an administration seeks dismissal of a tenured faculty member, there is a categorical imperative to examine if academic freedom protection should prevail. An academic freedom inquiry, of course, can…
Two recent posts to Diane Ravitch’s blog have provided links to responses to President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college. The first item is “The Trojan Horse of ‘Free’ Community College,” an op-ed published at Truthout [http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28637-the-trojan-horse-of-free-community-college#]. It is written by Adam Bessie, a faculty member at a California community college whose personal blog…
[Guest Blogger Ira Allen is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University of Beirut.] In November of last year, alongside scholars from around the disciplines, I signed an open letter written by philosopher John Protevi. The letter urged Marquette University to support embattled philosophy graduate student Cheryl Abbate and to “take steps…
An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a conference held at the libertarian Cato Institute promoting a report from the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which concludes that conservative-leaning academic centers on college and university campuses founded by wealthy donors “are not just surviving but thriving.” The report estimates…