Fisher v. UT and the Insider Baseball of College Admissions

BY MICHAEL A. OLIVAS This is a guest post by Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center. The most recent of his fifteen books is Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). He hosts a weekly NPR radio show,…

What Will Debt-Free College Mean for Public Colleges?

BY JOHANN N. NEEM Guest blogger Johann N. Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University and a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. At the Democratic National Convention, Bernie Sanders argued that the Democrats came together to support debt-free higher education for all students…

New Contract at CUNY

POSTED BY AARON BARLOW From the Professional Staff Congress: New York—CUNY’s 25,000 faculty and professional staff will get a long-overdue raise now that 94 percent of voting members ratified a new union contract, according to PSC President Barbara Bowen, who thanked union members for their hard work and commitment. The agreement between the Professional Staff…

"Campus Carry" Goes Into Effect in Texas

BY HANK REICHMAN I am old enough to remember August 1, 1966 — fifty years ago today — when a mentally disturbed ex-marine, Charles Whitman, climbed to the top of the tower at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) with an arsenal of high-powered weapons and began shooting.  For 96 terrifying minutes, Whitman fired…

Colorado Faculty Respond to Trump Appearance

POSTED BY HENRY REICHMAN The following is the text of a letter signed by 114 members of the faculty at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs in response to a campaign appearance at the university by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.  July 28, 2016 Dear Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak, With the pending visit of the Republican nominee…

It's All the Fault of the "Socialist" Faculty!

BY HANK REICHMAN The following comes from a story published yesterday by The Hill: Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Tuesday told delegates at the Republican National Convention that the GOP has “lost” the millennial generation of voters. Addressing the South Carolina delegation, Luntz attributed the Democratic Party’s hold on younger adults to colleges and universities…

Democrats Revise Education Platform; Step Back From Phony "Reform"

BY HANK REICHMAN Up until Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton yesterday, it was common to view the main fault line dividing the Democratic Party as that between Sanders’ largely younger and definitely more radical supporters and a more cautious and aging party “establishment” represented by Clinton.  But another fault line has been that…

chalkboard with an eraser perched on a chalkboard

Abandoning Tenure's Golden Handcuffs

BY GILLIAN STEINBERG I gave up tenure last summer after an excruciating year of fighting against budget cuts for the writing program I directed. I was told that, to save money, students would have only one semester of writing instead of two and that the program’s full-time professors would, over time, be replaced by adjuncts.…

Why Peter Wood's Attack on the AAUP Is Wrong

Peter Wood at Minding the Campus complains about the AAUP’s unanimous vote to censure the University of Missouri Board of Curators because “the AAUP has yet to find anyone to censure over abuses of Title IX.” What the hell does that mean? The AAUP censure list is a list of university administrations. The AAUP has…