Writing for The Conversation, a terrific publication based in Australia, Rodney Taveira has written a wonderfully insightful article on the HBO series True Detective. The article is titled “True Detective Lassos the Yellow King in Hollywood South,” and it approaches the series in multiple, very nuanced ways. Taveira, a lecturer in American Studies at the…
In the Michigan Senate, the Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee included in its budget proposal a penalty against any public college or university that teaches a labor-related course or offers a labor-studies program. Michigan State University has been considering an agreement to adopt a portion of programming from the National Labor College. A spokesperson for the…
Nate Silver’s unfavorable projections seem to have spiked progressive interest in the November elections, in which control of the House and the Senate, as well as control of a number of state governments, will be at issue. A fairly large number of House members and senators have decided not to seek re-election and to retire…
What follows is a letter sent by a University of Southern Maine alumna to Theo Kalikow, the university president, in response to his announcement that full-time faculty positions need to be eliminated in response to a projected deficit in the institution’s budget. It is, in some respects, a follow-up to a previous post that I…
Northwestern University has already indicated that it plans to appeal this decision, and it may very well be overturned on appeal. But the arguments presented by the NLRB regional director who has communicated the decision are very thought-provoking. I have removed the footnotes because I think that the decision is more than long enough without…
My ready illustration of talking heads with very little to say has long been the reporting in the immediate aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The nightly news anchors were on the air throughout most of that afternoon and evening, and each of them was provided with a rather large plastic model of the space shuttle,…
An article published yesterday by Portside in Portland, Maine, opens: “Faculty and students launched an occupation of a Maine university building Friday to demand a halt to mass faculty layoffs and department slashes that they say are part of the austerity cuts devastating public education nation-wide. “Over 100 people launched a late-morning occupation of the…
In some respects, but especially in terms of its higher-ed dimensions, the Russian invasion of Crimea seems to echo the American invasion of Grenada. Those readers who were old enough to be following the news in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, will remember the U.S. invasion of that small Caribbean island with a…
For several months, there was much political debate about the extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Predictably, people on the Far Right, from Rand Paul to Paul Ryan, asserted that the extension of benefits would amount to a disservice to those receiving the benefits. The reasons ranged from the broadly ideological—for instance, that…
Last month a bill was introduced in the Idaho legislature to allow guns to be carried on campuses in the state, though they would not be permitted in certain campus buildings or at certain campus events. The Idaho Statesman published an editorial, endorsed by its entire editorial board, opposing the legislation. The following two paragraphs…