Nearly three hundred academic activists convened at the University of Denver July 23–26 for the 2015 AAUP/AAUP-CBC Summer Institute. An intensive series of workshops and seminars prepared participants to organize their colleagues, stand up for academic freedom, and advocate for research and teaching as the core priorities of higher education. This was one of the…
This morning word came via AAUP Contingent Faculty Committee member Joe Berry’s indispensable COCAL Updates of the death last week of John Hess, following a six-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. John has been described by many as, in Berry’s words, “one of the fathers of the contingent faculty movement.” The description is well-merited; John’s work…
The American Prospect, a liberal periodical, distributes a weekly e-newsletter, The Labor Prospect, highlighting the best reporting and latest developments in the labor movement. The latest missive reports, among other stories, that “more and more Americans are recognizing that unions are a crucial component in the workplace, according to a new Gallup poll. Rising five percentage points…
Today I received multiple email alerts from disciplinary associations participating in the National Humanities Alliance. The issue is threatened cuts to international education programs, specifically Title VI and Fulbright-Hays. The proposed cut would slash $25 million (35%) from Title VI and Fulbright-Hays, and it has already been passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. This…
The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) has upheld its 2013 decision to terminate the accreditation of City College of San Francisco (CCSF), but the move will not affect the current status of the college, which remains open and fully accredited. ACCJC announced its affirmation of the decision it made in June 2013…
George Siemens first gained prominence in 2008 when he helped invent the massive, open, online course, better known by its acronym, the MOOC. MOOCs quickly evolved into something rather different from what Siemens had imagined, but that didn’t stop him from agreeing to head up the Gates-funded MOOC Research Initiative, which seeks to bring hard…
This week the Chronicle of Higher Education has published a series of articles from the Chronicle Review under the above heading that explore the issue of mass incarceration in America from academic perspectives. No one, including myself, will agree with everything in the five articles that have appeared, but all are thoughtful, informative, eye-opening and…
On July 9, 2015, the AAUP sent a letter to Louisiana State University (LSU) President and Chancellor Dr. F. King Alexander indicating that a supplemental report to the public record relating to the LSU administration’s existing presence on the AAUP’s censure list had been authorized. This letter came in response to the administration’s dismissal of Associate Professor…
Vincent J. Roscigno, a Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University, has published a clever and insightful piece under the above title in the online magazine Counterpunch. The entire article is worth reading, but here are some choice excerpts: Equating the administrative bloating of public universities and the harm it has caused as akin to…
The following statement was approved by the Board of Directors of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) during the Annual Conference of the American Library Association, June 2015. Librarians have a long history and practice of defending the free expression of ideas. The “Code of Ethics of American Library Association” (2008) states that…