In the current issue of Academe, AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum explores the question, “What’s New about Today’s Corporate University?” He concludes: Corporations today are interested not just in controlling those who might criticize their agenda but also in using institutions of higher education as publicly financed research centers and privately financed (tuition-funded) training facilities that focus on…
Kevin Carey, writing in The New York Times last July, said this of American colleges and universities: “These organizations are not coherent academic enterprises with consistent standards of classroom excellence. When it comes to exerting influence over teaching and learning, they’re Easter eggs. They barely exist.” This is humbug. It’s an attempt to channel the…
In the July, 2015 issue of The Baffler, Siva Vaidhyanathan, one of today’s most insightful public intellectuals and a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, sparked by Thorstein Veblen’s 1918 book The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men, examines the current state of American higher education…
There’s an article on Wired about something called a “Camera Restricta,” a prototype developed by Philipp Schmidt for a camera that, if “it identifies more than 35 photos taken in a given location—about 115 feet in any direction from where you’re standing—the camera’s shutter retracts and blocks the viewfinder so you can’t take a photo.”…
“Quitpieces?” That’s what Ian Bogost calls them in The Atlantic, writing “No One Cares That You Quit Your Job.” He’s right, but I’m more interested in what they say about our profession and what we can learn from them than in anything about any individuals. Two such quitpieces were posted two days ago, one by…
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, acceptance of the “free market” neoliberal corporatist model of top-down management has become so pervasive that its vacuous language is being extended backwards to cover events of almost a thousand years ago. Someone posted this comment on a post of mine yesterday: When have the faculty ever been…
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…
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…
Dear Professor Barlow, I am a professor of media studies at USF (and a proud supporter of USFFA) and the author of several books. I have written for several publications and blogs including Foreign Affairs, The San Francisco Chronicle, On Faith, Huffington Post, The Indian Express, The Times of India, The Hindu, and have spoken…
As Executive Editor of this blog, I have a tweet automatically produced for each post. It goes out over my name. Most often, that results in retweets and mentions that are positive; sometimes, quite the opposite. Never before, however, had I seen anything like this: .@AaronJBarlow Indian government should ban you from entering because of…