Three years ago, a blogger who signs his or her posts “TheNewDeal00” posted the following list to the progressive blog The Daily Kos. The post went viral, and on each subsequent Labor Day weekend, he or she has reposted the list framed with a fresh commentary. The list is titled “36 Reasons Why You Should…
The more upbeat view is provided by Harold Meyerson in a piece written for American Prospect and re-posted to the labor blog Talking Union. Although Meyerson starts with some grim statistics on the disconnect between increasing productivity and stagnant, if not declining, wages and on the decline is vacation time available to and taken by…
In the comments to one of the posts on this blog, someone wrote: in my opinion, faculty absolutely should not be governing a university. We need broadly trained academic professionals who understand the business of higher education making decisions, not narrowly-focused/educated faculty members who are likely privileged, entitled, and completely out of touch with the…
Last week the AAUP released a supplementary report about the dismissal of tenured professor Teresa Buchanan from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, which has been on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations since 2012. The report raises questions about the extent to which LSU followed its own policies and AAUP-approved principles of due process in…
On Thursday, the Iowa Board of Regents unanimously appointed former IBM senior vice president J. Bruce Harreld as the University of Iowa’s next president. Harreld’s experience in higher education is limited to a few years as an adjunct business teacher, but the regents apparently selected him over three distinguished academic leaders for his alleged expertise…
By Stephen Kuusisto I wrote yesterday on my blog Planet of the Blind about the selection of J. Bruce Herreld as the new president of the University of Iowa. The title of my post was: “On the Suborning of Free Speech and Shared Governance at the University of Iowa”—a conscious decision on my part, for I believe that the…
If the kind of mass strike reported in my previous post on labor unrest in India have become historical curiosities in the U.S., strikes by faculty and students at American universities do still occur, even if relatively rarely—and very rarely in tandem. But this past week at Central University of Hyderabad, both faculty and students…
This post is intended more for this blog’s American, rather than Indian, readers. The vitriol that has accompanied some recent posts related to Prime Minister Modi reflects political tensions that are being expressed very concretely, if complexly, in Indian daily life. Last week, a major strike occurred in India. It involved about 150 million workers…
By Stephen Kuusisto When Iowa’s Board of Regents selected J. Bruce Herreld, a businessman with no prior experience in education, as the new president of the University of Iowa they affirmed three principles: the university is now strictly a business, the faculty and students are to be put in their respective places, and those places…
Academic publishing has gone topsy-turvy over the past couple of decades, leaving those responsible for hiring, retention, tenure and promotion often scratching their heads. There’s so much money, now, in even small print runs (if the publisher is appropriately situated) that 300 hardbound copies sold at 100 dollars each to libraries can create profits–especially if…