Campus Equity Week: Building Platforms for Change

By Mayra Besosa This is the second in a series of Academe Blog guest posts arranged by the AAUP Committee on Contingency and the Profession in celebration of Campus Equity Week. For information on and resources for CEW, see the national website at http://www.campusequityweek.org/2013/ In organizing around contingency, there is no need to reinvent the…

Struggle to Write College Application Essay Exposes Lack of Training in Creative Thinking K-12

Guest Blogger Mary Collins taught at Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Writing Program for 12 years and is currently an Associate Professor of Narrative Nonfiction  and Director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development at Central Connecticut State University. She offers this post as a continuation of Norm Wallen’s article for Academe online called “Critical Thinking–Again?” “My…

Delaware Debacle

This is a guest post by Cary Nelson, past president of the AAUP and Jubilee Professor at the University of Illinois. Recognizing that the financial services industry succeeded in bringing the world economy to its knees, the University of Delaware administration apparently decided it was time to give them a crack at higher education. An…

Rethinking Academic Boycotts

This is a guest post by Marjorie Heins, a contributor to the newest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Professor Heins teaches “Censorship in American Culture and Law” at New York University and is a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. In 2005, a coalition of Palestinian organizations issued a call…

Change Requires Discipline

This is a guest post by Adrianna Kezar and Daniel Maxey. Kezar is professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success; Maxey is dean’s fellow in urban education policy at USC’s Rossier School of Education and Pullias Center for Higher Education. Their article, “Change Requires Discipline,” appears in the…

Reflections on Cleveland State’s Unionization Experience 20 Years Later

This is a guest post by Rick Perloff, a professor in the communication department at Cleveland State University. His article, “Organizing Cleveland State,” appears in the newest issue of Academe and goes into greater detail about the unionization campaign at CSU. It was the unlikeliest of stories at the most improbable of institutions. Cleveland State University, a bricks-and-mortar,…

A Warning to Mitch Daniels – My Book is Dangerous, Too.

Guest blogger Peter Dreier is Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His latest book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books, 2012). Dear Mitch Daniels: I’ve learned from recent news reports that thanks to your efforts as governor to…

“Just Say No”–Now

This guest post was written by Michael DeCesare, a Sociologist at Merrimack College. With the new academic year waiting around the corner, I’m reminded of a popular motto from the 1980s: “Just Say No.”  The story of the saying’s origin goes like this: At a meeting with schoolchildren in Oakland, then-First Lady Nancy Reagan was…