This is a guest post by Kevin Brown, a professor of English at Lee University. His article, “That’s Not What Happened to Me,” appears in the online version of the January-February 2014 issue of Academe. I do a fairly decent job of keeping up with higher education news, especially as it relates to my discipline. Thus, I’ve been…
This is a guest post by Jane Arnold, a professor of English and reading specialist at Adirondack Community College (SUNY). Her article, “What Do the Students Think?” appears in the online version of the January-February 2014 issue of Academe. In my essay, “What Do the Students Think?” the students point out that their educations often moved so…
On Thursday, January 16, 2014, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met with more than 140 education officials from public and private colleges and universities, corporations, foundations and non-profit groups to talk about college opportunity. Organized by White House economic adviser, Gene B. Sperling, the event drew pledges from the group for new…
This is a guest post by Richard McCarty, an assistant professor of religious studies at Mercyhurst University. His article, “Objects of the Inquisition,” appears in the January-February 2014 issue of Academe. The first incarnation of “Objects of the Inquisition” was a paper for the 2012 annual AAUP conference in Washington DC. I am grateful that it eventually…
The January-February issue of Academe marks a major milestone for the AAUP: It’s issue 1 of Volume 100. As we begin the celebration of the AAUP’s centennial, Nicholas Behm, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, and Duane Roen look to one of the AAUP’s founders, John Dewey, for a model of academic as public intellectual. There have been other…
In an article slugged “Tools for Teachers” on its website, the American Federation of Teachers presents what it says are “10 Myths About the Common Core State Standards.” I had a hard time getting beyond its rebuttal to the first “myth”: 1. “The standards tell us what to teach.” FACT: The Common Core State Standards define…
“‘Dying is easy, comedy is hard.’ I believe it was Shia LaBeouf who said that,” quipped Jim Carrey at the Golden Globes the other day. Someone always said it before. Maybe not exactly the same, but they said it. Question is, when is it influence, when imitation, and when outright plagiarism? In the Introduction to…
The AAUP has long been sounding the alarm about the problematic rise of contingent faculty appointments, which generally come with no job security, few if any benefits, and a fraction of the salary that a tenured or tenure-track faculty member can expect. In the January-February issue of Academe, Chris Nagel looks at the question from…
In his introduction to the 2000 edition of his 1987 book The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, Russell Jacoby wrote: Intellectuals have not disappeared, but something has altered in their composition. They have become more professional and insular; at the same time they have lost command of the vernacular, which thinkers…