Success at Crafton Hills!

The following comes from the July 2 edition of the San Bernardino Press-Enterprise: San Bernardino Community College District Chancellor Bruce Baron has said the district will not require instructors to place disclaimers on their course descriptions in the wake of a protest by a student last month. Initially, Crafton Hills College President Cheryl Marshall said…

The NLRA Turns Eighty

“Democracy cannot work unless it is honored in the factory as well as the polling booth; men cannot be truly free in body and in spirit unless their freedom extends into the places where they earn their daily bread.” Senator Robert F. Wagner Yesterday, July 5, marked the 80th anniversary of the signing of the…

AERA and ASHE Joint Resolution on Tenure and Academic Freedom in Wisconsin

The following resolution was released by the two organizations on June 30: The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), as the two national scholarly associations devoted to the study of all education and higher education, respectively, affirm the principle that academic freedom, grounded in the tenure…

Repercussions of the Salaita Case

This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education published an excellent and important article by Beth McMurtrie entitled, “Nearly a Year Later, Fallout From Salaita Case Lingers on Campuses.”  It is definitely worth reading, and not just because I’m quoted in it several times.  The article also provides an opportunity for some further reflection on the…

The Debate over an Academic Boycott of Israel–in Ireland

Writing for University World News, John Kelly reports on the debate over an academic boycott of Israeli universities that is now occurring in Ireland. Kelly notes that the issue has become prominent in Ireland considerably later than in most member nations of the European Union, 14 of which have governmentally endorsed the boycott. In Ireland,…

Murder Is Our Peculiar Pastime: Fifty Notable American Crime Novels: 3-4.

Bloch, Robert.  Psycho.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. The enduring popularity of Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation has insured that Psycho will remain the novvel with which Robert Bloch is most identified.  Much of the substantial body of work that Bloch produced belongs to the horror genre and other categories of speculative fiction.  Despite its…

The Current “Crises” in Higher Education

In an op-ed published by the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, James Baar identifies “Four Crises That Dog Higher Education”: 1. Inflation of product cost. 2. Deflation of product value. 3. Enablement of social and moral dissolution. 4. Lower-priced, knockoff and fraudulent competition. Given the space constraints on most op-ed pieces, Baar addresses each of…