Chancellor Wise on Possible AAUP Censure and Donor Influence in Salaita Firing and Dismissal

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise fired Steven Salaita for extramural utterances on Twitter. She gave an interview for the influential The News-Gazette: no other paper has pipelines to the university administration as does the Champaign-Urbana paper. In her interview she rather cavalierly dismissed the impact of a possible American Association of University Professors censure. She…

The Salaita Case and the Case for Faculty Unionization

In early August, I came across an op-ed on the Salaita case on the Huffington Post Politics blog, and now that just about everything else has been said about that case on this blog, I think that it may be time to consider the argument made in that op-ed. Written by Lennard Davis, a faculty…

Very Frustrated but Fearful

This past week, we received “over the transom” the following e-mail from a non-tenure-eligible full-time faculty member. I am reprinting it with his permission but with all identifying details removed. I think that the e-mail itself conveys the predicament of these faculty more pointedly than any paraphrase and comment that I might provide. _________________________ I…

More from the Florida State University Progress Coalition

New FSU President John Thrasher is taking a stance on controversy surrounding the Koch-funded faculty positions at the university that echoes the stance now being taken by those at the University of Illinois who have rescinded the offer letter to Steven Salaita and those who support that decision. Now that they have expressed their determination…

Speaker Series at Wright State University: 2. John McNay

The poster for the entire series is available at: https://academeblog.org/2015/01/06/speaker-series-at-wright-state-university-overview/

Dr. King and Public Education

Today Diane Ravitch has made several posts to her blog that mark Martin Luther King Day. The first [http://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/19/in-honor-of-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/] provides a link to Dr. King’s speech that was the culmination of the March on Washington [http://www.ibtimes.com/mlk-i-have-dream-speech-full-text-read-martin-luther-kings-entire-march-washington-1787100 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs], as well as to the text of his “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu:5801/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf]. The second…

Four Additional and Very Revealing Charts about the Economics of Intercollegiate Athletics and of College Football in Particular

“Sports Chart of the Day” is a news item distributed daily by Business Insider. The sources of these charts are indicated at the bottom of each chart.

Basic Arithmetic Is Catching Up with Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal is seeking the 2016 GOP presidential nomination; so Louisiana’s public colleges and universities may have to absorb $380 million in cuts and as many as nine institutions might be closed. In this last election cycle, much attention was paid to the disastrous effects of Sam Brownback’s “tax reforms” in Kansas. Everyone likes paying…

An MOU Relating to a Grant from the Koch Foundation

We have written a great deal about the conditions under which grants from the Koch Foundation are offered and received, in particular the strings attached to those grants that fund faculty positions. But we have not looked at the actual grant agreements; so I think that the following agreement between the Koch Foundation and the…

Stacking Influence at Taxpayer Expense

Here is another opinion piece from a member of the Progress Coalition at Florida State University, a group with a diverse membership that has been protesting the increasing influence of the Koch Foundation within the university. A somewhat shorter version of this op-ed has appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat [http://www.tallahassee.com/story/opinion/2015/01/10/lakey-koch-funded-positions-raise-serious-concerns/21575141/]. The author of the piece…

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