MacInnes, Helen. Assignment in Brittany. Boston: Little, Brown, 1942. Among authors in the espionage category, MacInnes stands out for her lack of cynicism and for her faith in the essential decency of individuals who are willing to expose themselves to hazard for the sake of a good cause. This sensibility makes her work very distinct…
Bonuses, both for performance and longevity, have become commonplace for higher-ed administrators at both public and private institutions. Indeed, these bonuses have become so commonplace that they now generally go unnoticed and unquestioned. But when such bonuses continue to be given during periods of great budget constraints, while faculty and staff compensation and/or positions are…
Here’s a news item that you may have missed: “Beachgoers in New York and New Jersey were outraged when they saw a plane towing a banner with swastika imagery Saturday afternoon. “Promoting the Web site proswastika.org, an organization called The International Raelian Movement aimed to reclaim the swastika symbol, saying it was ‘hijacked by the…
Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert has jumped on the Far Right bandwagon that has become very crowded with those eager to denounce President Obama’s most recent “failure of leadership”: specifically, his “failure” to visit the U.S.-Mexican border while he was in Texas to discuss possible responses to the “flood” of desperate Central American children who are…
In its July 9 issue, the Albuquerque Journal-News reports that the administration at Northern New Mexico College (NNMC) is now complaining about being inundated with public-records requests. Written by T.S. Last, the article “NNMC Claims That It Is Overburdened by IPRA Requests” is available at: http://www.abqjournal.com/426873/abqnewsseeker/nnmc-claims-its-overburdened-by-ipra-requests.html. (IPRA apparently is the acronym for Inspection of Public…
The Census Bureau has released a very interesting chart showing STEM graduates and STEM employment among Americans aged 18-64 in 2012. The chart may not necessarily indicate that the coming demand for STEM majors has been over-hyped, but it is clear that the current number of STEM degrees far exceeds the current demand…
Littell, Robert. The Amateur. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. A commercial and critical success that solidified Littell’s reputation as a novelist, The Amateur focuses on Charles Heller, a C.I.A. cryptologist whose fiancee is killed by West German terrorists. Intent on avenging her death, Heller tries to arrange for special targeting of the terrorists by…
Having followed all of the comments on Sean Kennedy’s post and the follow-up post from the AAUP leadership, I’d like to offer several observations: It is very clear that no one has been prevented from expressing his or her opinions or from doing so without constraint. The comments do, however, collectively serve to illustrate why…
The Department of Education and Corinthian Colleges have been engaged in extended negotiations over how the for-profit corporation will either shut down or scale down its various entities, including the Everest University, WyoTech, and Heald College chains. The government actions against Corinthian Colleges came after the Harkin Report highlighted Corinthian’s extraordinarily high student-loan default rate,…