Three days ago in my post entitled “More Calls for Chancellor Katehi’s Dismissal,” I mentioned that University of California at Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi promised a response to such calls. Yesterday, Katehi released the following statement: If you have followed the news lately, UC Davis may seem like a tale of two communities. Our university…
BY HANK REICHMAN [UPDATE 4/20: Yesterday an eighth legislator and the first Republican, Sen. Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) added his name to the roster of California lawmakers calling for Katehi’s resignation, declaring in a tweet that the University of California exists to educate students, not enrich administrators.] Calls for the resignation or firing of University of…
BY HANK REICHMAN This is the second in a series examining issues in the University of California (UC) system, the nation’s premier public research university. The first entry in the series, on the UC’s funding challenge, may be found here. On March 5, I began a post on this blog entitled “Corporatizers Gone Wild!” with…
BY HANK REICHMAN For those who don’t yet understand what academics mean when we talk about the “corporatization” of the university, a good way to begin learning might be to take a look at recent events surrounding the University of California (UC) at Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, previously notorious for presiding over the pepper-spraying of…
BY MARTIN KICH In a recent post, “Faculty Become Drowned Bunnies, Too,” Aaron Barlow reported and commented on the words and actions of Simon Newman, president of Mount Saint Mary’s University. Newman, whose previous professional experience was with private-equity firms, abruptly fired two professors, one tenured, and demoted a dean after his remarks about actively…
BY AARON BARLOW Two members of the new AAUP chapter at Mount St. Mary’s University—one tenured, one not—have been fired. According to an article by Scott Jaschik on Inside Higher Ed today, that leaves only ten chapter members. One, a tenured philosophy professor, was fired for disloyalty. The other, the faculty advisor to The Mountain…
BY MARTIN KICH This post is in response to a comment on my previous post that rightly pointed out that Wesley Coopersmith, the author of an article in U.S. News and World Report, is a millennial searching for meaningful “alternatives” to the current, unsustainable cost of getting a university education. The commenter asked whether we should…
BY CONNOR GIBSON New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer’s new book Dark Money includes details that bolster concerns publicized by UnKoch My Campus, and students and professors across the United States who have blown the whistle on Charles Koch’s cooptation of higher education programs. Universities are at the heart of Charles Koch’s lobbying model, which after…
This post was written by Dave Johnson for the daily Progressive Breakfast newsletter of the Campaign for America’s Future [http://ourfuture.org/], which has become a driving force behind the New Populist Movement. The group’s report, Organizing to Take Back America: The New Populist Movement, is available at: http://y.ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/New-Populist-Movement-Organizing.pdf. Prepared by Roger Hickey, the co-director of the Campaign for…
The Charles Koch Foundation has offered Western Carolina University a gift of $2 million in order to establish a Center of Free Enterprise. Mark Jamison, the retired postmaster of Webster, North Carolina, has an excellent op-ed piece in the Smoky Mountain News opposing the donation. He writes: The proposed $2 million gift from the Charles…