BY AARON BARLOW When I read Nicholas Kristof’s “The Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus” last night, I knew I would have to write in response. Drive-by commentary of this sort can’t be ignored by those of us who really are members of college communities. Fortunately for me, John K. Wilson posted even before I…
BY AARON BARLOW In 2012, I proposed the term ‘breitbarting’ with a narrower definition than, I think, the word deserves today. At that time, I limited it to what Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe proved so skilled at doing. They designed strategies of interview, editing and presentation to make a predetermined point (not to explore…
BY AARON BARLOW The first ‘bigly’ Twitter and academic freedom case was that of Associate Professor Steven Salaita just two-and-a-half years ago (there were others earlier, including that in 2013 of Professor David Guth that resulted in a policy instituted by the Kansas Board of Regents that “faculty members and other employees can be fired…
BY AARON BARLOW When the retiring Chancellor of a university system is able to negotiate for himself a new position as Chancellor Emeritus worth some $3,000.000, questions of the integrity of the institution should be raised. At the City University of New York (CUNY) this happened three-and-a-half years ago, but only now is a new…
BY AARON BARLOW There’s an essay on Chronicle,com by NYU professor Eric Klinenberg called “What Trump’s Win Compels Scholars To Do.” After discussing the overreach of Big Data, Klinenberg writes: There’s one other thing that universities must do better: teach student skills for learning, discerning, reasoning, and communicating in an informational environment dominated by quick…
BY AARON BARLOW President of the National Council of Teachers of English Doug Hesse posted on Facebook today that he is scrapping his upcoming presidential address “hoping I can find something to say to about the prospects of teaching reading and writing in a country where so much hatred abounds, where facts do not matter,…
