What’s So Radical about Defending Public Education?

Being antagonistic to corporatization should not necessarily be conflated with being broadly antagonistic to corporations. Universities and corporations have long had mutually beneficial relationships that have caused relatively infrequent controversies. And, just to be clear, although some faculty with more progressive political values have been very skeptical of those relationships between their universities and corporate…

Among School Children: A Review of Steven Salaita’s "Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom"

This is the second of our reviews of this book. The first one, published earlier today, can be found here. From dead infants in Gaza to Israeli students killed on the West Bank, from fragile undergraduates to childish administrators and trustees, from his own early years to the those of his son, Steven Salaita, in…

AAUP Chapter at Miami University Hosts Presentation by Howard Bunsis

In the late afternoon on Thursday, September 24, between 80 and 100 faculty and students at Miami University attended a presentation by CBC Chair Howard Bunsis on the university’s finances. The event was hosted by the relatively new but quickly growing AAUP advocacy chapter at the university. The presentation received fairly detailed coverage in the…

What Happens when Expatriated Workers Return Home?

Over the past few decades, multicultural studies, diaspora studies, and cross-cultural and transnational studies have all provoked considerable scholarly interest and have become distinct disciplines, reflecting the dramatic increase in the mobility of the global population. In the midst of these broader movements of people, corporations have placed considerable value on international studies, foreign-language studies,…

Liner Notes: Backdrop to "3 Things HBCUs Should Do"

This is a guest post by Donald Earl Collins. He is adjunct associate professor of history at University of Maryland University College. He previously taught at Howard University in the Department of Afro-American Studies and has written on topics such as multiculturalism, education, and African American identity. I come at the issue of the future of HBCUs, the topic of my article “Three Things…

The Whistleblower Effect

This is a guest post by Mihran Aroian and Michelle L. Damiani, contributors to the September-October 2015 issue of Academe. Mihran Aroian is a lecturer in the Management Department of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and was the first faculty member in residence in the Office of the Dean of Students, Student Judicial Services. Raymond…

Undermining Public Education

The September-October 2015 issue of Academe magazine begins with two articles focusing on disturbing trends in public education. Both articles point to increasing private sector influence as a threat to the integrity of public education. In an essay adapted from his address at the AAUP’s 2015 annual meeting, journalist Juan González argues that public education…

The Faculty: “Speed Bumps to Progress”?

In the comments to one of the posts on this blog, someone wrote: in my opinion, faculty absolutely should not be governing a university. We need broadly trained academic professionals who understand the business of higher education making decisions, not narrowly-focused/educated faculty members who are likely privileged, entitled, and completely out of touch with the…