round stone seal of the University of North Carolina, bearing an image of a shield flanked by two torches and the words LUX and LIBERTAS divided by a diagonal line, with a brick background

Uncivil Corporate Discourse

BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Solving social problems democratically requires well-informed citizens who can reason together despite differences in outlook. It requires, in short, rational public discourse. Making this happen has never been easy, and today it seems to be getting harder. Architects of the new Program for Public Discourse at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill…

The Age of Coddling Never Was

BY JOHN K. WILSON On Friday, op-ed columnist David Brooks of the New York Times published one of his classic tone-deaf attempts to offer big thoughts on our times: “The Age Of Coddling Is Over.” The headline was absolutely right. Not because the coronavirus has suddenly made us all realize the virtues of hardship, but…

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Suspend Student Evaluations during Pandemic

BY TAMMIE CUMMING, M. DAVID MILLER, FREDRIK DEBOER, AND JENNIFER BERGERON It seems that almost no aspect of academic life has been untouched by the coronavirus pandemic and the drastic measures governments and institutions have taken to respond to it. Nearly every postsecondary institution has adopted distance learning, forcing many faculty and students to adapt…

Attacking Liberty at Liberty

BY JOHN K. WILSON Liberty University has a long history of repression, including suppressing freedom of the press on campus by censoring its student newspaper. But Liberty reached a new low for liberty last week when president Jerry Falwell Jr. announced that the university has issued arrest warrants against two reporters for the crime of…

So How Much Funding Is Your Institution Receiving through the CARES Act?

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The CARES Act, or the third federal stimulus bill in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, includes funding for post-secondary educational institutions (vocational schools, community and technical colleges, and other colleges and universities. Click here for the preliminary estimates of those allocations. The document is 165 pages long, and it is organized…

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Adapt and Be Better

BY AARON BARLOW For the last few days, I have been immersed in responding to student papers and to their comments on my courses’ online platforms. This has caused me to think anew about what I have learned over the past decade of how students need to be responded to online as compared to in…

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Connecticut Medical Faculty on the Front Lines

BY DAVID KOCIEMBA AAUP clinical faculty are on the front lines of caring for COVID-19 patients. You can help them stay safe while doing so. Members at the AAUP chapters at the University of Connecticut Health Center and at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut (UConn) have formed a joint group of doctors,…

Another Casualty of COVID-19

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Off and on throughout last evening, I checked the results of the election for the seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. If you have not seen the results, here’s how the election turned out: At the beginning of the evening, I was gearing myself up to write a very caustic post,…