BY THE NORTH DAKOTA UNIVERSITY SYSTEM COUNCIL OF COLLEGE FACULTIES Below is a letter from the Council of College Faculties Executive Committee to the chair, Austen Schauer, and members of the Government and Veterans Affairs Committee of the North Dakota state legislature regarding House Bill 1446, followed by the text of a resolution the council…
BY BILL BERGMAN Recently, I participated in an experiment that had several first-year seminar (FYS) instructors attend each other’s classes. It was an effort to see if we could improve our teaching techniques by observing colleagues. My first visit was to a FYS class in physics. Surprisingly, this ninety-minute first-year science class not only taught…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Years ago, I was speaking with a colleague about one of the paradoxes of university life: tenured faculty enjoy more job security than almost any other occupational group in US society, yet they are often afraid to fight for their interests as a group. My colleague accounted for this lack of collective…
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TENURE-STREAM ART HISTORY FACULTY The statement was issued on January 13 on the website of the UMN Department of Art History with the note, “No images other than the painting of Jonah and the Whale appear in this story.” The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the…
BY DAVE NALBONE On December 10, 2022, during a morning commencement exercise, Purdue University Northwest chancellor Tom Keon, in an apparent effort to dovetail on the humor of the commencement speaker who gave examples of the made-up language he used to entertain his grandchildren, offered his “Asian version” . . . to stunningly bad effect.…
BY RODOLFO ROSALES Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship recipients have formed a community in which we can share the products of our knowledge, our talents, our research, and our work in the arts, humanities, and sciences—along with many other intellectual accomplishments across the disciplines that have been significant in establishing our footprint in the history of…
BY RAPHAEL SASSOWER Once upon a time, the administration of a sleepy state university proposed a new budget, offering the rationale that the new budget would “incentivize” departments and promote “entrepreneurial” conduct—couching it in terms of “decentralized” operations and rewarding colleges for increases in their student full-time equivalent enrollments. Three years into the proposed experiment…
BY ALAN SINGER Academic freedom is the most sacred tradition in American universities. Academic freedom generally ensures that “both faculty members and students can engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation” and “establishes a faculty member’s right to remain true to his or her pedagogical philosophy and intellectual commitments.” Although K–12 teachers…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The strike continues with no end in sight. Although there have been tentative agreements concerning post-docs and academic researchers, in the academic student employee (ASE) and student researcher units, the parties appear to remain well apart on the fundamental economic issues. This distance is most easily seen in the ASE category: although…