By Bill Ayers (reposted from billayers.org) The call for “trigger warnings”—a recent censorious trend gaining traction on American college campuses—is designed to alert students of any potentially troubling, unsettling, or upsetting course materials. The impetus is benign enough, and the context includes the important recent mobilization to deal seriously with epidemic levels of rape and…
Guest poster Michael McDevitt is professor in journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. He conducts research in political communication and is working on a book, Where Ideas Go to Die: Anti-Intellectualism in American Journalism. His e-mail address is mike.mcdevitt@colorado.edu. The killing of a school is never pleasant—especially when it’s your school—but a…
Guest blogger Alisa Roost is assistant professor of the humanities at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx. Her e-mail address is aroost@hostos.cuny.edu. Here, Roost writes about “Supporting Veterans in the Classroom,” an article that appeared recently in Academe. The United States has benefited from an all-volunteer military with both more professionalism in the armed…
By Donald Lazere I sent out the following “Appeal” last February. I received no response from ACTA and a form rejection from the Center for the American University. NAS posted it on its home page, where it received two evasive responses. George Leef, head of the Pope Center, answered with a review of my book.…
Guest blogger Ulf Kirchdorfer teaches English at Darton State College in Albany, GA. He says that “in wake of recent seriousness and silliness, I wrote the piece in part to come to terms with recent events.” We were going to invite Jesus Christ to come speak at our school, but the trouble was some said he was Jewish,…
The following guest post is by Diane Morrison, a professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work. Reach her at dmm@uw.edu. It originally appeared on Labor Notes and is reposted here with permission. In May of last year I answered my phone, at work in Seattle, and found myself talking to a union…
Cambridge University Press has decided not to publish a book about corruption in Russia by Karen Dawisha out of fears that British libel law would leave it vulnerable to litigation. In response to the letter from Cambridge University Press, Dawisha wrote the following open letter. By Karen Dawisha, Miami University Thank you for the recent letter…
This guest post was written by Michael DeCesare, Chair of the Department of Sociology at Merrimack College and President of the AAUP Chapter there. At a special meeting of the University of Southern Maine (USM) faculty senate on March 14th, USM President Theodora Kalikow announced her plan to eliminate four academic programs and lay off…
Guest Blogger Douglas Boyd is a Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston. The 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities” (adopted by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) (http://www.aaup.org/report/), the Association of Governing Boards of Universities (AGBU), the American Council…
Guest Blogger Beth Evans is an Associate Professor of Library Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Whether you believe that a library on your campus supports learning and research through print and electronic collections, or that the information literacy skills learned through research are integral to a college education, your…