Mainstreaming Hate after the Election
BY DONNA YOUNG This is a guest post by Donna Young, the guest editor of the November–December Academe issue. She is a law professor at Albany Law School and president of the Albany Law School AAUP chapter. My editor’s note for the current issue of Academe, which focuses on the theme “Race on Campus,” begins with the statement, “All is not…
Juxtaposition of the Day
BY MARTIN KICH This is a double juxtaposition for the price of one. Note the order of the two articles—the implicit greater concern for the seeming epidemic of dog shootings by police over the incidence of hate crimes. Here are the six “Fast Facts” in the second article: “1. The new report covers incidents that…
Academe Author Ibram X. Kendi Wins National Book Award for Nonfiction
BY KELLY HAND Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi Hardcover On November 16, the National Book Foundation awarded Ibram X. Kendi the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. We congratulate him and…
New Academe Issue on Race on Campus
BY KELLY HAND The November–December issue of Academe, now available on the AAUP website, considers the racial climate on campuses from a variety of perspectives. Guest edited by Donna Young, the magazine’s articles seem all the more relevant in the aftermath of an election that heightened concerns about increasing racial polarization in American society. Many student protests on…
The Debate Over "Safe Spaces" Has Taken on New Significance
BY HANK REICHMAN For some time now colleges and universities across the country have been roiled by debates over so-called “safe spaces.” On one side stand those who argue that many members of the higher education community, especially various minorities, need “safe spaces” free from potentially harassing behavior and verbal abuse. Sometimes they have gone…
What's a Teacher/Scholar to Do?
BY AARON BARLOW There’s an essay on Chronicle,com by NYU professor Eric Klinenberg called “What Trump’s Win Compels Scholars To Do.” After discussing the overreach of Big Data, Klinenberg writes: There’s one other thing that universities must do better: teach student skills for learning, discerning, reasoning, and communicating in an informational environment dominated by quick…
Impacts of Prestige Seeking in Higher Education
BY DESIREE ZERQUERA Guest blogger Desiree Zerquera, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on the structuring of access and opportunity for marginalized students, particularly within urban universities. With fall recruitment in full swing, many colleges and universities may be eager to tout…
Academia, Love Me Back
Diverse Faculty? Maybe "We Don't Want Them"
BY HANK REICHMAN “Why aren’t college faculties more racially diverse?” That’s the important question addressed in a recent column published in the Hechinger report and the Washington Post by Marybeth Gasman, professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Center for Minority Serving…