Supreme Court hears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas
This is a guest post by Yen Tran, a legal fellow in the AAUP’s Washington office. On Wednesday, I attended part of the US Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the case Fisher v. University of Texas. As a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, a minority student, a Texas resident, and someone…
Administrators ≠ Leaders
[Guest blogger Michael DeCesare teaches in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at Merrimack College, North Andover, MA.] I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. James Madison Speech in the Virginia Convention June 16, 1788…
Commercial software is authoritarian; FLOSS is the Enlightenment
The following is a guest post from Jonathan Poritz, an associate professor of mathematics at Colorado State University–Pueblo. It is a companion piece to his article in the newest issue of Academe. Part One ran earlier this week. I ended the first of this two-part post on a version of one of the main points of my Academe…
FLOSS for the mind: from the Free Software Foundation to the Creative Commons
The following is a guest post from Jonathan Poritz, an associate professor of mathematics at Colorado State University–Pueblo. It is a companion piece to his article in the newest issue of Academe. This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission…
The Hard Sell and the Educator
Guest blogger Barbara Madeloni of the UMass Amherst School of Education chose to boycott the Teacher Performance Assessment field test via Pearson. As a result, her contract was not renewed. There is a movement for her reinstatement through a petition that can be signed here. The incursion of for profit companies into higher education occurs with willing collaborators. Whether misguided,…
The Mistrustees
Joel Shatzky is Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Cortland, where he taught from 1968-2005. He presently teaches at Kingsborough Community College. The influence of big-time collegiate sports on the culture and priorities of universities has been a subject of considerable concern over the last few years. According to a recent Knight Foundation report: Presidents of universities with…
Forced to the Edge: The City Colleges of Chicago Contract
New AAUP Report on IRB Rules
This is a guest post by Zachary Schrag, a professor of history at George Mason University. He was a member of the subcommittee which released the report discussed below. Professor Schrag also maintains the Institutional Review Blog. A subcommittee of the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has released a new report, Regulation of Research on…
College Sports: Where Are Our Priorities?
Joel Shatzky is Professor Emeritus at SUNY-Cortland, where he taught from 1968-2005. He presently teaches at Kingsborough Community College. The following is cross-posted here with his permission. It originally appeared on Huffington Post and was picked up by Diane Ravitch’s blog. We re-posted it from there. On a recent trip to visit family and friends…