BY NICHOLAS FLEISHER AND DONALD MOYNIHAN The following is reposted by permission from Tone Madison, “an independent website, podcast, e-mail newsletter and event series covering music and culture in Madison,” Wisconsin. Chekhov wrote: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.”…
BY ANNIE ADAMS The COVID-19 pandemic belies the assertion that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is devoted to students. While instructors of practice-based courses in science and engineering and performance-oriented classes in the arts are scrambling to reach students remotely and offer them some semblance of a classroom experience, the NCAA has largely shuttered…
BY JULIE SCHMID The AAUP has issued the following guidance on the reopening of colleges and universities this fall, consistent with existing AAUP policies and standards. A number of colleges and universities across the country are considering whether to reopen their campuses in the fall. Much of the discussion about reopening has focused on the…
POSTED BY JOAN W. SCOTT A group of academics is calling for a comprehensive policy for public higher education in response to the coronavirus pandemic. They are, rightly I think, suggesting that the various federal stimulus packages have not made higher education a central concern, nor have these packages addressed fundamental issues facing us. They…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted from Remaking the University, where it appeared as the third in a series, Our Converging Crises. For the first two installments in the series go here and here. Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, co-editor of Remaking the University, and…
BY CATHERINE E. SAUNDERS, VIRGINIA HOY, AND DEBORAH M. SÁNCHEZ This is the third in a series of three George Mason-AAUP Academe Blog posts on lessons learned from the presidential search campaign. Read the first posts on GMU’s campaign and the costs of secret presidential searches here and here. The trend toward increasing secrecy in…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Solving social problems democratically requires well-informed citizens who can reason together despite differences in outlook. It requires, in short, rational public discourse. Making this happen has never been easy, and today it seems to be getting harder. Architects of the new Program for Public Discourse at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill…
BY TAMMIE CUMMING, M. DAVID MILLER, FREDRIK DEBOER, AND JENNIFER BERGERON It seems that almost no aspect of academic life has been untouched by the coronavirus pandemic and the drastic measures governments and institutions have taken to respond to it. Nearly every postsecondary institution has adopted distance learning, forcing many faculty and students to adapt…
BY DAVID KOCIEMBA AAUP clinical faculty are on the front lines of caring for COVID-19 patients. You can help them stay safe while doing so. Members at the AAUP chapters at the University of Connecticut Health Center and at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut (UConn) have formed a joint group of doctors,…
BY JUAN COLE Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and editor-in-chief of the Informed Comment blog, from which this is reposted with permission. The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this…