As part of Campus Equity Week, Brave New Films has released this terrific short film about the very real poverty of many faculty in contingent positions: Contains some illuminating stats comparing presidential salaries to adjunct wages, and personal stories from adjuncts–mostly women, which reflects the reality that contingent labor issues are also women’s issues. It’s…
[F]or those of us who think that universities exist for academic purposes — to teach academic knowledge and skills, to pass on academic virtues, and to sustain academic research — the stakes could not be higher. [former Secretary of Education under George Bush and newly appointed head of the University of North Carolina system Margaret]…
The following is taken from a media release issued today by the AAUP: The American Association of University Professors filed an amicus brief on October 26 with the Arizona Court of Appeals arguing that academic freedom to conduct research is essential to a vital university system and warrants protecting certain research records from disclosure. This case…
Marty Kich has already blogged about GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson’s advocacy of campus censorship of free expression despite his shallow and hypocritical railing against the perils of “political correctness.” But I can’t resist piling on. Let’s recall that the retired right-wing neurosurgeon’s claim last week was that unlike other right-wing fanatics he doesn’t want…
In a must-read article published yesterday on vox.com, David Roberts argues that “The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee.” “The Benghazi committee is not even the worst committee in the House,” Roberts contends. “I’d argue that the House science committee, under the chairmanship of Lamar Smith (R-TX), deserves that superlative for its…
T. E. Hulme was an English thinker who achieved some notice during the decade before the First World War, the conflict that would take his life. Though his positions would change over his short career (he was 34 when he died), Hulme was driven by the tensions between the individual and the community and between…
In “OSU Fund Managers Pig Out: Scholarships Not Awarded to Students,” an article published by the Columbus Free Press, John Lasker has focused on Ohio State University’s growing endowment and on the degree to which those assets are benefitting the students who attend the university. Here are some of the relevant facts, culled from Lasker’s…
Today launches Campus Equity Week, during which groups plan local actions to draw attention to working conditions of faculty. Campus Equity Week is an annual event started by the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a grassroots coalition of activists in North America working for contingent faculty: adjunct, part-time, non-tenured, and graduate teaching faculty working to bring greater awareness…
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that Apollo Education Group, the for-profit education company that operates the University of Phoenix, “is getting destroyed” on the stock market. Dawn Bilodeau, Chief of the Defense Department’s Voluntary Education Program, had released the following statement: “The institution will not be authorized access to DoD installations for the purposes…