College Affordability and the Needs of Working Students
BY LAURA W. PERNA According to a January 2020 Gallup poll, only 27 percent of adults in the United States believe that college is affordable. Democratic presidential candidates have responded to these concerns with proposals for free tuition at community colleges, student loan debt-forgiveness, and more. Some proposals, like increasing the amount of money that…
New Academe Articulates a Broad Vision of Higher Ed’s Social Mission
POSTED BY SARAH MINK Winter 2020 | Vol. 106, No. 1 Contributors to this issue of Academe articulate a broad vision of higher education’s social mission. Articles focus on addressing the needs of working, low-income, and incarcerated students; victories in coalitional student-led organizing; institutional reckonings with the legacy of slavery; and other topics. Follow the links…
A Better Way to Remember the Titans
BY STEVEN LUBET It was inevitable that the film “Remember the Titans” would be mentioned in the headlines of Herman Boone’s obituaries. He was the real-life African American football coach of a real-life integrated high school team in Alexandria, Virginia, that won the real-life 1971 state championship, and he passed away last month at age…
Listening As the Key to Diversity
BY AARON BARLOW Students are treated differently dependent on race and class and disability and sex. That’s a truism, something educators have known for at least half a century. But it’s also a truism we’ve still failed to address effectively. Why? In part because of the way students treat us but mostly because we don’t…
Diverse Faculty and Fear of Speech
BY JOHN STREAMAS After writing my Journal of Academic Freedom article, “A Vision for Scholar-Activists of Color,” I learned that my university has launched a new campaign to “recruit and retain” a diverse faculty, and now I serve on a subcommittee. At the same time it is also redefining standards for school-wide curricular requirements, and…
The Biggest Bullies: Or, How to Look Pleasantly Diverse without Diversity
The Coddling of the American White Male
BY JOHN F. COVALESKIE In “Speech, Academic Freedom, and Privilege,” in the current issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom, I argue that “colleges and universities should actively place themselves on the side of victims of systems of oppression.” Over the last couple of generations, a movement has developed to make college campuses more welcoming…
The Weaponization of Civility
BY JUDY ROHRER It feels like every week there is a new case of an instructor being fired, released, or not renewed because of some (usually progressive) political statement or action. The increasing number of us in untenured and contingent positions find ourselves self-censoring in meetings, stressing over student evaluations, second-guessing our political activism, habitually…
