BY HANK REICHMAN I grew up in the New York suburb of Great Neck, where last week a fourth-grade teacher won a landmark case against New York State’s “value-added modeling” (VAM) formula for teacher evaluation, an assessment system that was developed when John King, the current U.S. Secretary of Education, was the New York State…
BY HANK REICHMAN Let’s face it, the pharmaceutical industry has one heck of an image problem. Even if it is recognized that the notorious and now-indicted Martin Shkreli, who raised the cost of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was really an exception, price-gouging and the accumulation of excessive profit are charges regularly and…
Among other things, I am (or have been) an historian of railroad labor, so I was especially thrilled to learn that University of Wisconsin-Madison labor historian William P. Jones had joined the conversation around the assault on tenure in the Wisconsin system. Professor Jones, by the way, will be the plenary banquet speaker at AAUP’s…
Yesterday in my post reporting on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty’s unanimous vote of no-confidence in UW system President Ray Cross and the UW Board of Regents I noted that the vote came less than two hours after Gov. Scott Walker issued a statement — titled “University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty fuss leaves out important facts”…
The following is the text of a letter sent today by AAUP Associate Secretary Anita Levy to Dr. Ángel Cabrera, President of George Mason University, and Mr. G. Gilmer Minor III, Chair, State Council of Higher Education for Virginia: Dear President Cabrera and Chair Minor: Members of the faculty at George Mason University have advised…
The parade of “no confidence” votes directed against University of Wisconsin President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents marched on today as an overflow meeting of nearly 300 UW-Milwaukee faculty voted unanimously to approve a resolution of no confidence similar to ones previously passed at the Madison, LaCrosse, and River Falls campuses. UW Eau…
As the faculties at one University of Wisconsin system campus after another vote “no confidence” in the leadership of system head Ray Cross and the Board of Regents, new evidence has emerged to demonstrate that, despite public claims by Cross that under his leadership “the substance of tenure was simply moved from statute to board…
On May 4, the AAUP released an investigating committee’s report on unilateral actions taken by the administration and board of the College of Saint Rose in New York to reduce or eliminate twenty-seven academic programs and thereby to terminate twenty-three tenured and tenure-track appointments. The report, available here, concludes that the cuts and layoffs, “the result…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week two-time Polk award-winner Juan Gonzalez wrote his final column for the New York Daily News, where he worked for 29 years. A former national President and one of the founders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Juan will continue as co-host of the popular independent global news show Democracy…
BY HANK REICHMAN This blog has in the past posted several items concerning the efforts by the notorious conservative Charles Koch Foundation to influence curriculum and even hiring at institutions of higher education. Early last month I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion of the issue at the annual higher education conference…