Yeah, I have to join in on this. “Je suis Charlie.” That’s personal. But there’s also more: We, the American faculty, are the protectors of freedom with our pens and pencils just as are the cartoonists who are taking up their tools today in defense of that which should need no defense, the right to…
One of the most influential books on my own vision of academia and American life is Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Though I have serious reservations about parts of it, I return to the book again and again. Not surprisingly, I thought of it once more, today, when I read Patricia Williams’ article in The Guardian,…
A commenter called “blackcampbell” posted this response to my piece, “From Great Universities to ‘Knowledge Factories’: Another American Institution in Decline“: There are several aspects to the decline of academia that the author — not surprisngly, on his rush to look for a corporate strawman — misses. The “decline” is due to many forces 1)…
Early in the month, we reprinted a letter from University of Illinois department heads to incoming president Timothy Killeen about the Salaita case. It included this: The recent words and actions of senior officials in connection with the decision to revoke an offer of a tenured position in American Indian Studies to Dr. Steven Salaita have done…
Martin Kich began the month with ruminations on “branding”: What my institution and others like it aspire to is to have name recognition equivalent to that of the most prestigious institutions in the country, or, failing that, approaching that of the institutions with the most successful athletic programs in the nation. It is a Sisyphean…
Hank Reichman opened the month by reprinting a letter from Jewish scholars about which he wrote: Three weeks ago I posted to this blog a piece I titled “And Now There’s a Blacklist?” In that post I reported that an organization called the AMCHA Initiative, which claims it is “dedicated to investigating, documenting, educating about,…
John K. Wilson began the month with an update on the Salaita situation: Considering that all of the trustees signed a letter embracing Salaita’s firing, it would be shocking if even a single trustee voted for Salaita. The Sept. 11 Board of Trustees meeting will obviously be the center of considerable attention, but it ultimately will…
Brian C. Mitchell began his August posts with a look at a survey of higher-ed CFOs: Ultimately, it’s not the job of the CFO to find incremental solutions to systemic problems eating away at the financial sustainability of American higher education. Collaboration like that proposed by CFO’s in the recent survey is important. But it…
Hank Reichman’s first post of the month dealt with Foundation for Individual Rights in Education lawsuits against campus speech codes: FIRE’s mission and approach differ from those of the AAUP and we sometimes disagree. Nonetheless, often our concerns overlap, as was indicated in an enlightening session offered by FIRE staff members at AAUP’s recent Annual…