"Trigger Warnings" on Campus
By Bill Ayers (reposted from billayers.org) The call for “trigger warnings”—a recent censorious trend gaining traction on American college campuses—is designed to alert students of any potentially troubling, unsettling, or upsetting course materials. The impetus is benign enough, and the context includes the important recent mobilization to deal seriously with epidemic levels of rape and…
How would you respond if that happened offline?
I vividly remember my exact reaction the first time I read about Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). It was, “They can’t be serious, can they? How on earth can anybody teach 30,000 people at once?” Since I had already developed an interest in quality control for online education, I followed every new MOOC development…
"If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?"
Money, the goal of all goals, today is ruining both education and government. When money becomes, as it has, our only measure of value, structures protecting anything else melt before it. As the “business model” is most keenly attuned to profit, it has become the one model for all of our endeavors. In my first “real” job out…
Reichman in the Times
Our own Hank Reichman (click here to see a list of his posts) has contributed to a New York Times opinion section “Room for Debate” spread, “Tongue-Tied on Campus.” Not only is he an important contributor to this blog but Reichman is the AAUP’s first vice president and chairman of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His most…
May/June 2014 Issue of Academe
AAUP members should receive their print copies of the May/June issue of Academe over the next few days. In the meantime, they can read it online–as can anyone else (there’s no paywall around here). If you only know us through the blog, you may find the magazine worth your while. More in depth and carefully prepared,…
Reactions to Kansas Social Media Policy
If you’ve been following the news, you know that the Kansas board of regents on Wednesday adopted a social media policy that allows faculty and other to be punished for a broad and vaguely defined range of expressions, including any that are “contrary to the best interests of the employer” or “impairs . . .…
Christopher Kennedy's Dubious Reasons for Firing James Kilgore
Christopher Kennedy, chair of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, has given an interview to a local newspaper in which he explains why he believes that adjunct instructor James Kilgore must be fired for his involvement in the 1970s radical group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Kilgore served time in prison for possessing explosives and…
Alternatives to the Growing Corporate Model of Education and Educational Assessment
One of the things the assessment gurus of corporate-style education don’t like is the idea of professors in complete control of the curriculum and pedagogy in their own classrooms. They want everyone “to be on the same page,” feeling that education has no value unless done in unison. This is the thinking behind most cries…
"Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible"
Henry Giroux, in his new Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, credits the phrase of the title here to sixties radicals. I don’t remember it myself, but it certainly fits the time. College students were feeling empowered even as they were under attack; colleges and universities were places for change, for innovation, and the students felt…