College for Whom?

When my father got out of the army at the end of WWII, one of the colleges he applied to was Oberlin. A good school, it wasn’t far from home; he knew very little more about it. As it happened, according to his story, one hundred other GIs had also applied–and the college suddenly had…

Why Ph.D.s Should Teach College Students

Who should teach? And who should decide who teaches? What should the learning environment look like? And who should decide how it looks–and should there even be just one “look”? These old questions came to mind today when I read Marty Nemko’s October 29 article in Time, “Why Ph.D.s Shouldn’t Teach College Students.” I went…

The Most LGBT-Friendly and -Unfriendly Colleges and Universities in the United States

The Princeton Review’s list of the 20 most LGBT-friendly colleges and universities in the U.S.: 1. Emerson College (Boston, Mass.) 2. Warren Wilson College (Asheville, N.C.) 3. New College of Florida (Sarasota, Fla.) 4. Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.) 5. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wis.) 6. Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) 7. Franklin W. Olin College of…

Salaita in His Own Words: Columbia College, Chicago Speaking Tour

Professor Steven Salaita on October 8, 2014 spoke at Columbia College Chicago that I previously commented on. John Dworkin asked the panelists, Steven Salaita, Iymen Chehade and myself whether we would consent to being taped and YouTubed: a neologism? Mr. Dworkin recently released on his YouTube channel videos of the three panelists. Here are parts one and…

Thanks to Diane Ravitch, I read Glen Ford’s July post today, “How to Pay for a Free, Non-Racist Higher Education.” It is certainly worth the look. It starts: Corinthian Colleges is going out of business, and other for-profit rip-offs will follow. However, “The very existence of Corinthian, Phoenix, Ashford and the other gangster institutions proves…

Salaita Speaks!

It’s 6:50 in the evening on Wednesday, October 8, 2014. The 7:00 event start time at Columbia College Chicago draws near. The lecture hall is filling up rapidly. The star attraction has not arrived. Professor Iymen Chehade, indeed a star in his own right, and I are waiting for Steven Salaita. A skilled, poised and charismatic student…

When Religious Beliefs Conflict with Public Policy

Writing for the Boston Globe, Oliver Ortega has reported on the Lynn, Massachusetts, school district’s decision to sever ties with Gordon College, a Christian institution that has placed student teachers in the district’s classrooms for more than a decade. The tension between the college’s and the school district’s positions on the employment rights of gay,…

Oh, the Story I Found: Pelle Svanslös in America

My morfar (grandfather on my mother’s side) hunted alligators by a lake in Småland. If this sounds strange to you, imagine how my mother must have felt when as a child in the 1940’s in Sweden she read Pelle Svanslös i Amerika. Or for that matter, how strange and incredulous a journey to America Gösta…

"Welcome to Sweden": American and Swedish Bathos?

In order for something to be funny–In Sweden or the United States–it must first be funny. The challenge with being funny is that being deliberately funny is not very funny. No, I am not talking about the entire episode of the new NBC show Welcome to Sweden. I am referring to the opening scene in…

A Swede Appreciates Fourth of July

When I was a child visiting America, I remember my aunt having these square pans, deep, with chocolate cake, and upon it in the right colors, the American flag was drawn in enough sweetness to now make my teeth hurt.  That was the summer, too, she took me to a drive-through bank, and I recall…