The Debate Over the Salaita Case
Today’s InsideHigherEd includes dueling essays on the Salaita firing by me and by Cary Nelson. You can read my comment on Nelson’s essay here. Nelson’s assertion that “I believe this was an academic, not a political, decision” strains all credulity. No one can seriously believe that the political consequences of hiring a controversial professor had no…
Bérubé on Salaita
The following is the text of a letter sent to University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Chancellor Phyllis Wise by Michael Bérubé regarding the university’s apparent decision to revoke a job offer to Professor Steven Salaita. Michael Bérubé is Edwin Earl Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, a former president of the Modern Language…
AAUP Officers' Statement on Case of Steven Salaita
Today, Rudy Fichtenbaum, AAUP president, and Hank Reichman, first vice-president and chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued the statement below. Statement on the Case of Professor Steven G. Salaita We have read with concern yesterday’s report on insidehighered.com that the University of Illinois has apparently withdrawn a job offer…
Illinois AAUP Committee A Statement on Steven Salaita and UIUC
The following is a statement by the Illinois AAUP Committee A on the case of Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The Illinois Conference Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors supports the honoring of the appointment of Steven G. Salaita in the American Indian…
Doubling Down on the Exploitation of Adjunct Faculty
In an article titled “Outsourced in Michigan” written for Inside Higher Ed, Colleen Flaherty chronicles the movement among Michigan’s community colleges to outsource the hiring of adjunct faculty and the management of related “payroll duties” to a corporation called EDUStaff. EDUStaff had previously specialized in providing substitute teachers for K-12 systems. So, if you have…
Selling Us The Right String But the Wrong Yo-Yo
Back in 1962, when I was first inhaling huge gulps of pop music, there was a song by Dr. Feelgood and the Interns that would occasionally surface on Atlanta top-40 stations. It contains these lines: You’ve got the right string, baby But the wrong yo-yo Somebody knocking on your door Well, I passed this morning…
Update from Northern New Mexico College
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…
Even superprofessors deserve academic freedom.
Over on my personal blog, I write a lot about MOOCs. You might say I’m more than a little MOOC-obsessed, but I really am trying to develop other interests. That effort ran aground this week when a Massive Open Online Course at the University of Zurich basically imploded. It’s a confusing story (the Chronicle report on…
The Looming Crisis in Higher Education
The “real problem” behind the exploitation of adjunct faculty is quite obvious: universities have continued to produce a reasonable number of Ph.D.’s but no longer are willing to hire a reasonable number of them into full-time, never mind tenure-track, positions. This situation will change when enrollment in graduate programs starts to contract, and even to…