POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This year, more than most years, we should be acutely aware of what all healthcare workers, first responders, and essential workers are enduring for the sake of their communities. But nurses have been truly in the front lines. Nurses are dealing with the sickest of the sick for extended shifts and…
POSTED BY SARAH MINK Spring 2020 | Vol. 106, No. 2 The spring 2020 issue of Academe, inspired by the AAUP’s statement In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education, examines the complexities—conceptual, critical, structural, and political—of the production of knowledge. Joan W. Scott, professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Like other blog posts by Academe Blog‘s contributing editors and guest bloggers, this blog post represents the opinion of the author and does not represent a policy position of the AAUP. Universities such as Purdue are making plans to re-open this fall, with president Mitch Daniels citing the “close to zero lethal…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In one of the most widely read posts that I have made to this blog, I collected videos and images that have attempted to provide visualizations of the enormous differences between a million, a billion, and a trillion dollars. These kinds of almost inconceivable numbers have already become a concern as…
BY HANK REICHMAN I’ve been posting pieces about California’s ill-conceived all-online community college, Calbright, and faculty resistance to it pretty much since its inception. You can find those posts here. Now that all the state’s community colleges, like pretty much all of higher education nationally, are now offering classes only remotely, using online methods, the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH We emphasize to our students that critical thinking is not just an advantage but a necessity in our increasingly complex world. But these sorts of juxtapositions, which have become commonplace online each and every day, really require something much more basic than critical thinking. In fact, discussing them as…
BY AARON BARLOW Why are we professors so scared of having someone look over our shoulders? Do we really believe that having someone peek into our classrooms—or sitting in through a class—is a threat? Is our academic freedom going to disappear simply because someone is watching? When I was being interviewed by a dean for…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Last year, after DePaul philosophy professor Jason Hill published an anti-Palestinian article that drew protests, I wrote a post titled “In Defense of Jason Hill and His Critics” in which I noted that Hill should not be punished for his offensive right-wing views–but also pointing out that Hill, in fact, hadn’t…
POSTED BY JOAN W. SCOTT A group of academics is calling for a comprehensive policy for public higher education in response to the coronavirus pandemic. They are, rightly I think, suggesting that the various federal stimulus packages have not made higher education a central concern, nor have these packages addressed fundamental issues facing us. They…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Organizers do what they can, with what they have, where they are. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic our small community college chapters have been focusing on preserving the faculty majority of adjuncts who are nearly out of their minds with worry over income the next several months. While Colorado is essentially a right-to-work…