In fall 2015, the Executive Council endorsed the MLA’s joining with twenty-eight other scholarly societies to oppose legislation that would facilitate carrying handguns on college campuses. It also issued its own statement on Texas’s campus carry law. Statement Condemning Texas SB11 (“Campus Carry Law”) The Modern Language Association joins other scholarly organizations in condemning Texas SB11,…
The following “Breaking News” item was distributed today by the Detroit Free-Press: “Eastern Michigan University’s Board of Regents today stood with Gov. Snyder and declined to vote on the future of the Education Achievement Authority. That keeps the reform district running for now—at least until Snyder introduces legislation aimed at a new effort to improve education in…
John Zipp, the president of the AAUP chapter at the University of Akron, recently contributed an op-ed, titled “University Board Selection Process Needs Shake-Up,” to the Columbus Dispatch. After opening with a range of examples of how the Boards of Trustees of Ohio’s public universities have recently made ill-considered decisions–often despite very vocal concerns expressed…
In today’s Community Colleges newsletter, Steve Kolowich interviews Hattie Elmore, who works with impoverished college students. The article, titled “’Sometimes I Cry’: A Ground-Level View of Student Poverty,” opens with the following overview of the problem: “Student hunger and homelessness can be hard to notice, but Hattie Elmore sees them up close, all the time. “Ms. Elmore is director…
In an editorial titled “Don’t Pick a New Fight: After Repeal of Senate Bill 5, Ohio Doesn’t Need Another Labor Battle,” the editors of the Columbus Dispatch, a newspaper not known for its support of labor unions, have publicly discouraged the members of the Ohio House from passing HB 377, which would impose “right-to-work” restrictions…
This week’s “Sunday Show Wrap-Up” from The Hill (see below) seems particularly instructive. The one thing on which the GOP presidential candidates uniformly agree is that President Obama is an ineffectual leader (or, worse–because Donald Trump is now suggesting, something much more sinister). Moreover, other than Trump himself, of course, all of them agree that…
When Honored Leaders Held and Even Promoted Some of the Least Honorable Attitudes of Their Times The Atlantic has published a series of articles and facilitated several forums addressing the controversy, centered at Princeton University, over President Woodrow Wilson’s attitudes toward race. In “The Racist Legacy of Woodrow Wilson,” Dick Lehr provides an account…
This relatively new but rapidly growing chapter in Ohio now has a nice website at http://www.miamiaaup.org/. The chapter news also can be followed on Facebook and Twitter. The website includes a link to an article in The Miami Student [http://miamistudent.net/] by Megan Zahneis, reporting on the major administrative restructuring occurring at Miami’s regional campuses: “Miami’s…
I have now reached an age at which the “cutting-edge” works of contemporary literature that I read as an undergraduate are starting to be regarded from a truly historical perspective. For instance, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the original staging of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. To mark the anniversary, the play is being…