BY AARON BARLOW “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.” That line, and Juliet’s following thoughts, come to mind each time I listen to talk of interdisciplinary courses and programs. So bound are we by names and the divisions they create that we no longer seem able to see how ridiculous and small-minded we…
BY JAY SMITH My article in the current issue of Academe, “Academic Freedom, Meet Big-Time College Sports,” tells a story about academic censorship. It provides a blow-by-blow account of the process whereby deans in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill intervened in departmental course scheduling in order to prevent the teaching of…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH I have read about several faculty members who are using the Trump presidency as the topic for courses in various disciplines. When I was younger, I would have been tempted to try to develop a composition course around the topic, but with age, I have become somewhat less recklessly masochistic.…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the fourth section of the most recent higher education report produced by the Ohio Conference of AAUP. John McNay, the President of the Conference, and Sara Kilpatrick, the Executive Director of the Conference, deserves kudos for doing the bulk of the work on this report. The report has…
BY JOSHUA DOLEZAL Guest blogger Joshua Dolezal is a professor of English at Central College. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as Cather Studies, Literature and Medicine, and Medical Humanities. He is also the author of a memoir, Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging (University of Iowa Press, 2014). During my first year at a Christian…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following statement has been released by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), which is affiliated with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): Language is powerful. It empowers individuals to explore and change themselves and their worlds. A belief in this power of language and the abilities…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Daniel Radosh, the head writer for the Daily Show, sent the following note along with a signed permission slip that would permit his son to read Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 as part of a school book club: “I love this letter! What a wonderful way to introduce students to the theme…
This is a letter written by George Mason sophomore Mark Hammond to the George Mason student newspaper, The Fourth Estate. For some reason, that newspaper never published it on its website; so he has given permission to Connor Gibson, a co-founder of the group Un-Koch My Campus, to disseminate it. _________________________ “Last fall, when…
The following paragraphs are from an article written by Sharon Dell for University World News Global Edition, “South Africa: Universities of Technology Eye Rich Prospects in Waste”: “South African universities of technology are positioning themselves as critical partners in what is considered a fairly new but highly relevant area of research, innovation and job…