Phillips, David Atlee. The Carlos Contract. New York: Macmillan, 1978. David Atlee Phillips served with the C.I.A. for a quarter of a century, from 1950 to 1975. From 1973 to 1975, he was head of the agency’s Western Hemisphere Division. In 1977, his memoir, The Night Watch: Twenty-Five Years of Peculiar Service, was published. Meant…
Readers of this blog who have been following developments in the case of Professor Steven Salaita, whose appointment to a tenured position at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana was revoked, apparently in response to his controversial Twitter postings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, may find a recent analysis of the case by Michael C. Dorf, Robert…
The focus on the disparity between the administrative and instructional staffing and compensation is becoming more local. These are the opening paragraphs of the third article in a four-article series in the Norman Transcript comparing the credentials and the compensation of administrators and faculty at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma: “In today’s competitive workforce, the…
Today’s New York Times includes an editorial entitled “A Teachout Moment: Gov. Cuomo Should Welcome Zephyr Teachout.” Cuomo’s campaign has been trying to remove his challenger from the Democratic primary. Cuomo, with money and incumbency, will clearly win but, as the Times says: he should not dismiss Ms. Teachout and her growing number of followers as irritants. Her criticisms are mostly…
Several months ago, I posted this brief item: Snarkiest Headline on the Torturously Slow Winding Down of the Afghanistan War I receive a number of e-mailed newsletters from political blogs, and this was the headline of the daily newsletter from HuffPost Hill: How Do You Ask a Drone to Be the Last Drone to Crash…
Students come to the college experience through a variety of doors. Nearly half of them begin at two-year institutions. Millions more do not fall into the traditional pool of 18-22 year old first-time freshman. Large numbers also earn degrees on line or in some blended learning format. But when most Americans think about students entering…
MarYam G. Hamidani (Stanford University), Nicole Stephens (Northwestern University), and Mesmin Destin (Northwestern University) are co-authors on a 2014 report in Psychological Science that looks at factors that affect the college success of first-generation students. Hamidani, a psychologist and associate director of Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, spoke about the paper…
Marquand, John P. Stopover Tokyo. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957. John P. Marquand was one of the most highly regarded social realists of his generation, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for The Late George Appley. His novels were widely reviewed and widely read. But his reputation has faded somewhat over the past half-century, and he…
The following is the text of a letter sent to University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Chancellor Phyllis Wise by Michael Bérubé regarding the university’s apparent decision to revoke a job offer to Professor Steven Salaita. Michael Bérubé is Edwin Earl Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, a former president of the Modern Language…
Today, Rudy Fichtenbaum, AAUP president, and Hank Reichman, first vice-president and chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued the statement below. Statement on the Case of Professor Steven G. Salaita We have read with concern yesterday’s report on insidehighered.com that the University of Illinois has apparently withdrawn a job offer…