In an earlier post, “Meningitis B at Princeton and at the University of California at Santa Barbara” (https://academeblog.org/2013/12/10/meningitis-b-at-princeton-at-the-university-of-california-at-santa-barbara/), I reported on the outbreaks of the disease among students at the two campuses and on the decision by the Centers for Disease Control to allow a vaccine not yet approved for use in the U.S. to…
Over the past six months, I have posted two other speeches by Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez: his comments in commemoration of Labor Day and his very well-received speech to the national convention of the AFL-CIO. He has already established himself nationally as a very strong and impassioned voice in support of workers and…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org. _______________ In November, the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and Workforce launched an electronic forum to gather comments from contingent faculty members about their working conditions and the effect of those working conditions on students. The recently-released…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ In a recent article, Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, pinpointed several misconceptions about higher education that are driving our national discussion and policy. He tackles, for instance, the almost exclusive emphasis on college as an agent of…
A piece by Nate Kreuter, “More Than Love,” on Inside Higher Ed today alerted me to Miya Tokumitzu’s article “In the Name of Love” for the magazine Jacobin. She writes: There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem is that it leads not to salvation,…
Dissident Voice describes itself as “a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and justice.” It presents a perspective that most readers would describe as Far Left. Although I am generally not put off by the articles that appear in it, some of them are written from points of view that are considerably more radical…
This post is cross-posted from Yellow Dog with the permission of its author, Jeff Rice of the University of Kentucky. First person narratives about the adjunct experience in academia are being published – it seems – daily. Today, I came across a link from a Facebook friend about a Fairbanks, Alaska adjunct on food stamps. A link to…
This is a guest post by Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history emerita at Yeshiva University. She also is a former editor of Academe and served on the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Her article, “One Historian’s Perspective on Academic Freedom and the AAUP,” is in the January-February issue of Academe. Since I no longer edit…
Inside Higher Ed today posted an article by Colleen Flaherty called “Congress Takes Note.” It deals with a new report, “The Just-In-Time Professor: A Staff Report Summarizing eForum Responses on the Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education” from the U.S. “House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democratic Staff.” Its conclusions are all what we have known for…
The most disturbing consequence of the contemporary belief that any sort of ‘progress’ in education stems from individual initiative and can be proven by testing is the devaluation of the teacher. Problem is, we don’t learn on our own; learning always involves community. Language itself builds from–and builds–community, and learning is dependent on language. And…