Amid growing outrage among faculty about secretive presidential searches (see here and, for an AAUP statement, here), the College of Charleston in South Carolina recently appointed a new provost over complaints from faculty who say they were not consulted in the decision-making process, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. The position of provost, the institution’s…
For nearly a decade under Conservative rule, the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office exercised tight control over the release of information. Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s swearing-in on Wednesday, however, things seem to be changing. One Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) producer requested an interview with Navdeep Bains, the new minister of innovation, science and economic development. She heard…
The following is excerpted from a column by Albor Ruiz published today in the New York Daily News: If you thought only fast food workers, home attendants and the like were abused and exploited by their employers and were willing to protest and risk arrest for demanding their rights, think again. College professors — an…
The following are excerpts from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, published online two days ago: Public colleges should not assume that a generous salary will buy them a president who is adept at raising money, a new study concludes. After accounting for factors like institution size, the researchers, all at Florida State…
Note: I was writing this post before John Wilson posted his reaction to the Wolfe resignation. As should be clear, our perspectives differ. As the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed once more to rule on a case involving the consideration of race in college admissions, a wave of protest against campus racism by minority students…
The following resolution was approved unanimously by the Academic Senate, California State University (ASCSU) at its November 6 plenary meeting in Long Beach, California. On November 3, the AAUP issued its own Statement on Presidential Searches. ACADEMIC SENATE OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AS-3234-15/EX November 4-5, 2015 PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH PROCESS IN THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY…
The following is the text of a statement issued on November 5 by the AAUP: On July 20, the AAUP and AFT‐Wisconsin released a joint statement condemning the attacks on tenure and shared governance in higher education that the Wisconsin Legislature included in its annual budget and in Act 55, which Governor Scott Walker signed…
The following essay by Christopher Newfield, Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is reposted with permission from Chris’s and Michael Meranze’s Remaking the University blog. We’re many years now into the New Normal for public universities. We’ve known for a while that this means permanent budgetary austerity.…
On the same day that the California Faculty Association (CFA) announced that 94% of its voting membership had voted to authorize strike actions, faculty and staff represented by another AAUP-affiliate, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of New York (CUNY), demonstrated yesterday evening outside the CUNY offices in Manhattan. PSC members have…
Marilynne Robinson is best known for her award-winning fiction. All four of her novels have won major literary awards. Her second novel, Gilead, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. The New York Review of Books recently published a two-part “conversation” between Robinson and President Barack Obama, a big fan of her work. In the 2015…