Suppressing Freedom of the Press, Part 2

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Committee to Protect Journalists has released its list of journalists who were killed in 2016; clicking on the journalists’ names will link you to their stories: 48 Journalists Killed in 2016/Motive Confirmed Terminology explained Mohammad Nasir Mudasir , Melli Paigham Radio December 15, 2016, in Mohammed Agha District, Logar Province, Afghanistan…

Suppressing Freedom of the Press, Part 1

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In early December, the Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual listing of journalists jailed for political reasons over the past year. Here are the totals by nation: Azerbaijan: 5 Bahrain: 7 Bangladesh: 2 Cameroon: 1 China: 38 Cuba: 2 Egypt: 25 Eritrea: 17 Ethiopia: 16 Gambia: 3 India: 1 Israel…

Wisconsin GOP Set on Legislating Greater “Intellectual Diversity”

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In yesterday’s Wisconsin State Journal, there is an article by Nico Savidge titled “Complaining of Bias on Campus, Republicans Push for ‘Intellectual Diversity’ at UW Schools.” Here are the opening paragraphs: “Conservative critics of higher education in Wisconsin have opened a new chapter of their long­running complaints about institutions such as…

25th Anniversary of the “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity”

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in 1992. The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS’s) board of directors. INTRODUCTION Human beings and…

American Dialect Society 2016 Words of the Year

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR deplorables (basket of): epithet used by Clinton in speech about Trump supporters nasty woman: epithet used by Trump addressing Clinton in final presidential debate Pantsuit Nation: popular Facebook group for Clinton supporters post-truth: belonging to a time in which facts matter less than beliefs and emotions…

The Russian Model and Student-Loan Debt

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In September, about six weeks before the presidential election, Abby Jackson wrote the following short item for Business Insider: Russian Education and Science Minister Olga Vasilieva called for a return to mandatory farm labor for school children, according to Russian state-operated news agency RIA Novosti via The Moscow Times. Vasilieva said that students should be…

Toolkit for Opposing the DeVos Nomination

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Network for Public Education [http://networkforpubliceducation.org/] has put together this Toolkit for Opposing Betsy DeVos’s nomination as Secretary of Education. Although the emphasis is on K-12 education, it seems very likely that DeVos will support the expansion of for-profit colleges and universities, the increased privatization of public colleges and universities, and…