Proffitt, Nicholas. The Embassy House. New York: Bantam, 1986. For more than a decade, Nicholas Proffitt served as a correspondent and a bureau chief for Newsweek in many locations around the globe, including “hot spots” such as Saigon and Beirut. He has won awards for his reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict and on the…
The following letter by Michael Rothberg originally appeared on his website. Rothberg is the Head of the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies. He is the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000) and Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in…
The University of Alaska (UA) faces a $26M budget deficit. Jobs have been cut, departments are being downsized, and departing faculty are being replaced by adjuncts who earn poverty wages and receive no benefits. Student services have been slashed while student fees have increased. Public Radio programming has been axed, as has the University of…
This summer I am teaching online, in part because many students prefer to take classes online. Summer is the time for mischief, experimentation and creation—there is just something about that added sunlight, all sorts of plants I know not the names of in bloom everywhere—it just makes you want to try something new. In my…
William Deresiewicz’s new book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and The Way to a Meaningful Life is being published today by Free Press. You can read an excerpt from it at the New Republic, along with a critique I wrote as part of a symposium for Minding the Campus. I interviewed him via email about his…
Part I of this series on first-generation students looked at the value of talking about social class in reducing the achievement gap compared to continuing-generation students. This week’s post will look at how the cultural fit between first-generation students and colleges and universities can impact student success. “Unseen Disadvantage: How American Universities’ Focus on Independence…
In most four-year college strategic plans, there is a good-faith statement calling for increasing diversity as an institutional goal. There are good – even noble – reasons for doing so. The principal one is that American colleges and universities must look more like the rest of America if they are to remain relevant in the…
The New York Post recently ran a story by Carl Campanile under this headline: “College Liberals Spurn $10M Gift from the Koch Brothers.” Mitchell Langbert, a faculty member in the Business School at Brooklyn College, had been in extended discussions with the Koch Brothers Foundation about establishing a “financial center” within the Business School. When…
Donald Lazere’s new book is Why Higher Education Should Have a Leftist Bias. I interviewed him via email about his book. JW: Your book’s title is provocative, but is it true? Do you really believe that higher education should have a leftist bias? Your pedagogical model is Gerald Graff’s Teach the Conflicts, and you are…
Since his death, it has become clear that, in contrast to his very extroverted stage persona, Robin Williams very quietly did an uncountable number of good things throughout his life. Among the many good causes that he supported, he literally stood up for collective bargaining rights. The following photos show him walking the picket line…