Some one once asked me what a president does all day. They thought, like so many others, that presidents held out tin cups traveling the world searching for alumni with money. I replied that presidents are better thought of as King Solomon determining how to divide the baby. They behave most days as nineteenth century…
Jeff Gundlach is the CEO of Doubleline Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. He was previously the star performer for another firm, the Trust Company of the West (TCW), where he managed the Total Return Bond Fund. He left TCW in a very public, law-suit spawning spectacle of mutual accusations of self-interested impropriety. Still, the…
One of the dangers of the over-reliance on (some would say “abuse of” and I would not argue) adjuncts and other contingent hires is that it creates a pressure-cooker environment for those particular teachers, one that sometimes explodes–as it did yesterday for adjunct and Slate contributor Rebecca Schuman. Writing, putatively, about student essays and whether or not they…
In late October, Federal prosecutors in El Paso, Texas, formally charged Marco Antonio Delgado with conspiring to launder $600 million in drug profits for the Mexican Milenio Cartel. Delgado was a prominent attorney and known in El Paso and beyond as a generous philanthropist. The investigation that led authorities to Delgado began in 2007 when…
Published by AlterNet, C. J. Werleman’s “Look at the Stats: America Resembles a Poor Country” presents a succinct survey of data that suggests that the American Dream is becoming an ever more remote possibility for more and more Americans. Here is an excerpt from the article [the full text of which can be found at…
Never mind that the Ohio legislature continues to cut funding to K-12 education and local communities or that those cuts have resulted in the loss of thousands of teaching positions and local civil-service jobs. Never mind that the Ohio legislature continues to give tax breaks to the most affluent Ohioans and Ohio corporations, even as…
Our Dignity and Our Rights Have No Price On August 13, 2013 the employees of the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) received an email notifying them that beginning in the fall all would have to submit to a daily biometric scanning system to verify their attendance. Some of us were able to verify at our…
For many candidates seeking presidencies at American colleges and universities, one of the first questions asked is often what percentage of students participates in Greek life? It goes beyond the lasting impressions – overwhelmingly negative — created by Animal House. These candidates see Greek life as an impediment to leadership. Schools with high concentrations of…
Yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch included a report that Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, has agreed to become Interim President at West Virginia University. There is a news conference scheduled at West Virginia University this morning of this afternoon, but I am assuming that the Dispatch would not have printed the story without feeling…