Justifying Greed
BY AARON BARLOW I’ve been told, and by people I respect, not to use the word “neoliberal,” especially when dealing with education–let alone politics. “It is too amorphous,” they say. “It doesn’t really mean anything; it’s just something to rail against.” That has changed. Not only that but, today, we can no longer keep neoliberalism…
Purdue Grabs Kaplan: How Should Faculty Respond?
On Blacklists, Harassment, and Outside Funders: A Response to Phil Magness
BY HANK REICHMAN A little more than a month ago, Martin Kich posted to this blog a piece on the Koch network that prompted a lively and extensive exchange in the comments section between Conor Gibson of UnKoch My Campus, John Wilson, and Phil Magness, a professor at George Mason University, frequent commenter on this…
Some Fantasies Really Ought to Be Grounded in Some Reality
BY MARTIN KICH In a recent Curbed newsletter, I came across an item titled “Three Gilded Age Berkshire Retreats for Sale Right Now.” The author of the article, Robert Khederian, notes that as a summer destination for the very affluent of the “Gilded Age,” the Berkshires never quite had the cache of Newport, Rhode Island,…
George Mason Students Sue University for Koch Agreements
BY SAMANTHA PARSONS This is a guest post by Samantha Parsons, a graduate of George Mason University and co-founder of Transparent GMU. She is now a Grassroots Campaign Strategist at UnKoch My Campus. On February 9th, George Mason University students filed a lawsuit against their school and its fundraising arm, the George Mason University Foundation,…
Koch Network’s Student Protest Ban Disguised as “Campus Free Speech”
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is the latest report from UnKoch My Campus. Although it does not entirely align with other recent discussions of this topic posted to this blog, I think that it contributes some new elements and details to that discussion: In the past month, state lawmakers across the country coordinated an…
Because Presidential Searches Should Be Even More Secretive
BY MARTIN KICH What follows is from an uncredited story published by the Northwest Florida Daily News: In a debate that has repeatedly flared in recent years, a House Republican on Monday proposed Sunshine Law exemptions for information about applicants for top jobs at state universities and colleges. “The proposal (HB 351), filed by Rep.…
Closing a University Golf Course; Monetizing Institutional Assets
BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Cleveland.com, Karen Farkas reports Kent State University is closing its golf course because of declining revenues and increasing operating costs. . . . The university bought the 18-hole par 70 course on Ohio 59 in Franklin Township, in 1966. The course includes a putting green, chipping area, snack bar, banquet room…
More on the Double Standards for College Coaches and Athletes
Writing for the Hartford Courant, Sally Jenkins provides a very acerbically satiric, first-person response ostensibly from University of Connecticut football coach Randy Edsell to the furor now surrounding his decision to rescind a scholarship offer to a player recruited by his predecessor: “Over the course of my long and distinctively insincere career, which includes…