BY JOHN K. WILSON Jonathan Zimmerman has an essay today attacking the 1619 Project, and since InsideHigherEd has eliminated comments on its articles, I wanted to discuss it here. Zimmerman is obviously right when he writes that “we must also avoid imposing a singular interpretation or ideology that will prevent — not promote — a…
BY AARON BARLOW One of my biggest fears for higher education brought on by the coronavirus crisis is that the confluence of forced online learning and a casualized faculty will be grasped by cash-strapped administrators to create a new and cheaper model for both course offerings and faculty employment. The new model makes tremendous sense…
BY AARON BARLOW What does it mean to be a college in the contemporary milieu? Can we continue with expectations now decades out of date? Can we continue to carry the deadwood, both administrators who are mired in models of education only applicable to expanding economies and professors who have refused to update pedagogy to…
![Abhi Sharma from India [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]](https://i0.wp.com/academeblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Books_HD_8314929977.jpg?resize=220%2C126&ssl=1)
BY AARON BARLOW Oh, the fear of losing relevance! Responding to a Chronicle Review collection of essays on the demise of traditional studies in English called Endgame, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in “The Academic Apocalypse: The crisis of English departments is also a crisis of faith” (01/11/20), expresses the worries of some: [O]ur…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Recent years have seen extensive cuts in foreign language education at US colleges and universities. Between 2013 and 2016 alone some 651 foreign language programs were eliminated. Often these cuts are part of broader assaults on the humanities and liberal education more generally. In 2018 the AAUP and the Association of…
BY AARON BARLOW One of the latest fads at the City University of New York is the “interdisciplinary” course. It has become, on many campuses, a requirement for graduation and a plum atop administrative fruit baskets. To me, it always seemed so much window dressing, something to impress the flaneurs but offering little in the…
BY MATTHEW DEAN HINDMAN AND RYAN SAYLOR Matthew Dean Hindman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. Ryan Saylor is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa. Since 1920, the AAUP has championed shared governance in higher education; you can even complete its questionnaire to gauge how your…
BY AARON R. HANLON Aaron R. Hanlon is Assistant Professor of English at Colby College The public is right to care about what kinds of values our institutions of higher education are (and are not) imparting to students. People are likely to disagree over which particular values they think colleges and universities ought to emphasize—in…
BY AARON BARLOW The City University of New York is quietly floating the idea of consolidating majors across its campuses. Rather than a Physics major at City College, Hunter, Baruch, my own New York City College of Technology and all the rest, students would be funneled into one CUNY campus. This, I suspect, is seen…
BY HANK REICHMAN In 2017 California State University Chancellor Timothy White issued two controversial executive orders on general education and remediation that prompted a major backlash among faculty. Many opposed the substance of the orders, but most concerning was the Chancellor’s failure to engage faculty governance on either the system or campus levels. The CSU…