This post is intended more for this blog’s American, rather than Indian, readers. The vitriol that has accompanied some recent posts related to Prime Minister Modi reflects political tensions that are being expressed very concretely, if complexly, in Indian daily life. Last week, a major strike occurred in India. It involved about 150 million workers…
Writing for Vox, Libby Nelson offers a thoughtful analysis of the recently released average scores on this past year’s SAT tests. She notes that although the average scores declined slightly, at least part of that decline may reflect the increased diversity among the students now taking the test. Although I have only a very superficial…
In other news from the GOP side of the presidential campaign, Chris Christie has suggested that he would consult with the CEO of FedEx on how to reduce our problems with illegal immigrants because FedEx accurately tracks ten of millions of packages per year. Almost immediately, Chistie was criticized for comparing human beings to parcels,…
So here is how Scott Walker’s opinion on building a wall along the entire U.S. and Canadian border has changed, once that the idea began to be lambasted as ludicrous. It started with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday: “Todd: We are talking about the southern border and building a fence there. We don’t…
In the “Undernews” newsletter distributed daily by the Progressive Review, David Sims of the Cass Business School in London distributed the following abstract from an unidentified academic paper: “Our patience with forming interpretations and reinterpretations of others’ behaviour is not unlimited. The time comes when we lose interest in trying to understand, and conclude that…
A new report from the Association for Public and Land-Grant Universities is titled Land-Grant but Unequal. Focusing on the funding for the HBCUs covered under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, the report offers the following conclusions: “From 2010-2012, 61 percent of 1890 land-grant institutions did not receive 100 percent of the one-to-one-matching funds from…
Sinking into insignificance in the presidential polling, Scott Walker has now suggested that building a wall along our border with Canada may be necessary to preserve our national security. Putting aside what this emphasis on walling out the world indicates about the current state of our national psyche—or at least the Far Right psyche—the proposals…
What follows is a news release from the U.S. Department of Energy. Given the controversy that has surrounded the Smithsonian Institute’s exhibit featuring the Enola Gay, this latest idea for a National Park, spread over three sites related to the Manhattan Project, seems, at best, a very dubious proposition, fiscally and politically—never mind morally. Even…
Here is the weekly newsletter from Education Dive, which focuses largely on digital innovations in higher education: The first article somewhat blithely acknowledges that “instructor availability” is one of the major concerns of students enrolled in MOOCs, as if it is a problem that can be resolved with more “innovation,” rather than one of the…