There Be Dragons

BY JONATHAN REES I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of maps and mapmaking lately. Apparently, one of the great myths of cartography is that medieval maps would label sections of unexplored territory “There be dragons” in order to discourage people from going to those places. Of course, even had this actually…

Against monoculture.

BY JONATHAN REES Last week, the learning management system (LMS) at the University of California – Davis went down right before finals week. It didn’t take too long for the vendor to restore it, but this kind of message from the administration there, quoted by Phil Hill at the blog e-Literate, probably didn’t inspire very…

Dog Wags Tail

BY JONATHAN REES I spent much of last weekend with two of my colleagues from the Colorado Conference of the AAUP at Adams State University in Alamosa, CO, helping to form a brand spanking new AAUP chapter. Hello everybody in the Paris of the Valley! [JR waves enthusiastically.] Turns out their chapter will be helpful…

“You get raises?”

BY JONATHAN REES Last week, I went to a meeting with our system’s Chancellor, Tony Frank, who is also the President of the Colorado State System’s flagship campus, CSU-Fort Collins. I was sitting in on a Faculty Senate meeting with no planned agenda except to ask Frank questions.  Nonetheless, almost every single question was something…

The Latest in Administrative Overreach

BY JONATHAN REES Aaron has already pointed you this morning to the very sad and strange events going on at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland.  I want to quote from the same IHE article that Aaron did and add some different emphasis: “As an employee of Mount St. Mary’s University, you owe a duty…

Beverlee’s Bluff: the Real Threat to ASU

This is a cross-post from Watching Adams “an effort to communicate information, conduct investigative journalism, and facilitate discourse about Adams State University (ASU), a state-supported liberal arts university in Alamosa, Colorado.”  It was researched, written, and revised by a team of faculty and staff at Adams State, working with Danny Ledonne and appears here with permission.…

Workers' Control in Academia.

I was a labor historian earlier in my career. Sadly, I hardly ever get to teach that subject anymore because the class never fills. However, the lessons that most of the best labor historians I read during graduate school described in their work have never left me. Indeed, they seem more relevant to my own…