Not too long ago I was on a panel about academic freedom at the University of California, Davis, with Robert Post, Dean of Yale Law School, former AAUP General Counsel and Committee A Chair, and co-author (with Matthew Finkin) of For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom. At a dinner afterwards with campus…
DiPaola, Jerry. “Stipend to Offset College Athletes’ Costs Could Unbalance Playing Field.” Pittsburgh Tribune Review [PA] 27 Sep. 2015. For decades, the scholarship model in college athletics remained unchanged: room and board, tuition and books, miscellaneous fees. . . . This year, those items will be supplemented for the first time at 65 of the…
Over the past few decades, multicultural studies, diaspora studies, and cross-cultural and transnational studies have all provoked considerable scholarly interest and have become distinct disciplines, reflecting the dramatic increase in the mobility of the global population. In the midst of these broader movements of people, corporations have placed considerable value on international studies, foreign-language studies,…
It is, of course, one of the great linguistic ironies that education in general and higher education in particular are among the most jargon-ridden of the disciplines. Indeed, it may be that our penchant for almost endlessly creating and re-creating jargon has made us especially susceptible to the jargon invented by the “educational reformers,” the…
Former Northwestern professor Alice Dreger spoke in Evanston on Sept. 30, a month after resigning from her position in the medical school to protest censorship of the medical journal Atrium after she was guest editor of the “Bad Girls” issue. Dreger told an audience at Bookends and Beginnings bookstore that Northwestern administrators had removed the issue from…
Michael Behrent, the president of the Appalachian State University chapter of the AAUP, and John Steen, Program Coordinator of Scholars for North Carolina’s Future (with contribution from Jim Carmichael, professor at UNC Greensboro and president of the AAUP’s North Carolina Conference) have an op-ed today in The News & Observer or Raleigh, NC entitled “Outrageous move to foster runaway…
First, the Chronicle of Higher Education has provided this update on former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannion’s suit to receive some of the revenue generated from the sale of products bearing his image: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday upheld the main thrust of a judge’s landmark…
In June 2010, Jack Stripling wrote a piece for Inside Higher Ed reporting on faculty responses to a survey about the performance of University of Toledo president Lloyd Jacobs. Here are the first few paragraphs of that piece, titled “Toledo Chief Raked over Coals”: “In a scathing review of his controversial presidency at the University…
An opinion piece, titled “Missed Opportunity; A Canceled Speaker Deserved to Be Heard at Pitt,” was recently published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [September 26, 2015: A, 6]. After indicating that Finkelstein had been invited to participate in the university of Pittsburgh’s inaugural National Security Symposium, the op-ed writer offers this pithy summary of the very dubious…
Beer, Julie Crothers. “Educators Worry Dual-Credit Degree Requirement Asks Too Much of Teachers.” Goshen News [IN] 26 Sep. 2015. . . . Dual credit courses offer students the opportunity to earn college credit for coursework through a postsecondary institution that they complete while enrolled in high school. Locally, secondary schools partner with Indiana University,…