An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ Two thoughtful pieces, one recently published in the New York Times and one in Forbes, ask us to step back from our current obsession with “innovation” and “disruption,” business principles and technology in education, and think—just for a moment–about the purpose…
Jones, Douglas C. The Court Martial of George Armstrong Custer. New York: Scribner, 1976. Following a twenty-five-year career as an army officer, Douglas C. Jones taught at the University of Wisconsin in the department of journalism and mass communications. He was in his early fifties when his first novel, The Court Martial of George Armstrong…
Christmas Day, 1921, the prison gates opened and Eugene Victor Debs was free at last! Warren Gamaliel Harding, one of America’s most underrated presidents, displayed rare political courage in commuting Debs’s sentence to time served. He was liberated as a persecuted political prisoner from the American gulag that included the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. His “crime” was opposing the draft during The Great War…
A new post on Retraction Watch, “Peer review isn’t good at ‘dealing with exceptional or unconventional submissions,’ says study,” quotes the authors of the study of the title: Because most new ideas tend to be bad ideas, resisting unconventional contributions may be a reasonable and efficient default instinct for evaluators. However, this is potentially problematic because unconventional work…
Inside Higher Ed recently ran an article on a 25% increase in the teaching loads for full-time non-tenure-eligible writing faculty at Arizona State University. The article, written by Colleen Flaherty is titled “One course without Pay,” and the full article is available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/16/arizona-state-tells-non-tenure-track-writing-instructors-teach-extra-course-each The writing instructors, none of whom were willing to be identified…
Let’s face it: The traditional peer-review process was not meant for a digital age. It needs to be altered (not abandoned) so that it once again has a consistently useful function, working as something other than a wall to be breached. It needs to help move the best of scholarship to the fore while providing…
For several hours, I have been puzzling over Ulf Kirchendorfer’s most recent post, “Why Torture Is So American!” Irony and satire are sometimes as difficult to understand and to respond to as they are engaging and provocative. Ulf’s post is certainly very provocative in highlighting the ways in which “torture” may be said to have…
There is growing consensus that more attention must be paid to increasing the number of two-year graduates who go on to complete a four-year degree. While over 80 percent of first year community college students state completion of a four-year degree as their intention, less than 12 percent of them accomplish their goal. This dismal…
“It need scarcely be pointed out that the freedom which is the subject of this report is that of the teacher,” says the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Freedom. The 1940 Statement follows up: Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their…