When You Have to Pay People to Teach and to Read a Book: A Bank Chairman’s Deep-Pocketed Promotion of Atlas Shrugged

In my previous post, I discussed James McNair’s article on the proposed multi-million-dollar gift by Koch Foundation and Poppa John’s CEO John Schnatter to the University of Louisville [http://kycir.org/2014/12/09/university-of-louisville-set-to-get-millions-from-charles-koch-foundation-and-papa-johns-ceo/]. That article includes the following paragraph: “The Koch-Schnatter gift would not be the first to expand free-markets instruction at the University of Louisville. Six years ago,…

The Koch Brothers and the University of Louisville: Or, Why You Cannot Sell Your Soul, or Your Principles, Incrementally

On December 9, James McNair, writing for Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, has explored the many implications of a pending gift from the Koch Brothers and Poppa John’s CEO John Schnatter to the University of Louisville. The article, the full text of which is available at http://kycir.org/2014/12/09/university-of-louisville-set-to-get-millions-from-charles-koch-foundation-and-papa-johns-ceo/, opens: “Declines in state appropriations and negative financial trends…

Justice Denied to Steven Salaita: A Critique of the University of Illinois Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure Report

I have significant concerns about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure report on the summary dismissal of tenured Associate Professor Steven Salaita in the American Indian Studies Program. The CAFT report states: “The investigative subcommittee interviewed the Chancellor on November 14.” I was able to independently confirm with multiple sources that the…

Debs's Merry Christmas, World War I and the Tarnished Legacy of A.A.U.P. Co-founder Arthur Lovejoy

Christmas Day, 1921, the prison gates opened and Eugene Victor Debs was free at last! Warren Gamaliel Harding, one of America’s most underrated presidents, displayed rare political courage in commuting Debs’s sentence to time served. He was liberated as a persecuted political prisoner from the American gulag that included the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. His “crime” was opposing the draft during The Great War…

UIUC Report Condemns Dismissal of Steven Salaita

The Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has just issued a subcommittee “Report on the Investigation into the Matter of Steven Salaita.” The Report (see full PDF here) is a powerful critique of how the University of Illinois administration and trustees dealt with the Salaita case. The Report argues that…

Misunderstanding Civility and the Salaita Case

Philosophy professor Joseph Levine argues in a New York Times blog that Steven Salaita was justified in violating standards of civility in a particular tweet about anyone who supports Israel during the attacks on Gaza being “an awful human being.” Levine defends Salaita against the charge of incivility on the grounds that he believes Salaita’s views to be…

The Ideal of the American University: A Primer (Part 2)

“It need scarcely be pointed out that the freedom which is the subject of this report is that of the teacher,” says the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Freedom.  The 1940 Statement follows up: Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their…

The Ideal of the American University: A Primer

At its idealistic best, the traditional vision of American higher education was one of beauty, dynamism and diversity. With undergraduate students able to take courses from as many as 40 different professors, with requirements designed to give as broad a taste of intellectual pursuits as possible, with “shared governance” assuring that corporate-style top-down influence is…