Pedagogy of “Doubt” and the Attack on Colleges of Education (Part I)

Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared  here. Let’s Start with a Few Recent Headlines: Teacher Prep Colleges Are Failing the Teachers Study Delivers Failing Grades For Many Programs Training Teachers  States Slow to Close Faltering Teacher Ed. Programs (also see more recently: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html ) Traditional colleges of…

Reporting Back from the PA AAUP Annual Meeting

Guest blogger Jacob A. Bennett lives and works in Philadelphia, where he teaches rhetoric, poetry, and literature. I was surprised to receive, and happy to accept, an invitation to attend this year’s annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Conference of the AAUP on October 3. The keynote speaker, Dr. Gerald Beyer of Villanova University (the host…

Shared Governance at Risk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

We are now beginning to see the effects of the recently passed budget bill in Wisconsin that eliminated the protections of tenure and shared governance from state statute for the University of Wisconsin. The bill specifically called for deleting a provision in law “specifying that the faculty of each institution be vested with responsibility for…

South Asia Faculty Response to HAF Statement

We at the Academe Blog have been hosting posts on a conflict between scholars sparked by Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley. While we encourage and promote open debate and discussion, some of the comments on some of the posts have been anything but civil. Heated discussion can be positive and all of…

Another Lesson from Illinois: Beware Tenured Radicals

By Robert Warrior, Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As the one-year anniversary of the debacle over the aborted appointment of Steven Salaita at Illinois approached, Inside Higher Education published an op-ed by former AAUP president Cary Nelson spelling out the lessons he contends we can all learn from…

Statement to the University of Wisconsin System Tenure Policy Task Force

Joint Statement of the UW-Milwaukee AAUP, UW-Whitewater AAUP, and UW-Madison AAUP executive committees to the UW System Tenure Policy Task Force. Milwaukee, Whitewater, and Madison, 17 September 2015 The University of Wisconsin has a one hundred year-long tradition of upholding the principles of academic freedom and shared governance as set forth by the American Association…

Fundraising Embarrassment at Portland State University

This guest post is by Michael J. Clark, Associate Professor of English and Director, Center for Public Humanities at Portland State University. The recent fundraising contretemps at Portland State University has embarrassed the institution, along with its many committed administrators, donors, faculty, and staff. While the failures in the oversight process by university fundraising executives have been chronicled by…

Hindu American Foundation Statement

The Hindu American Foundation[i] (HAF) Board of Directors notes an anonymous[ii] posting on this blog site on September 16, 2015, ostensibly representing over one hundred scholars with expertise in South Asia that co-signed a statement[iii] also previously posted here.  After publicly calling for a debate and spirited conversation over the upcoming visit of Indian Prime…

Faculty Response to Harassment by Hindu Nationalist Organizations

Over the Labor Day weekend, most signatories of the “Faculty Statement on Narendra Modi’s Visit to Silicon Valley” received threats from individuals in South Africa and Canada and email harassment  from the Hindu Vivek Kendra,  a Hindu nationalist organization affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member. Several letter signatories have also been targeted…