Kentucky Board of Education Stands Firm against Bullshit Science, Addendum 1

This letter is a statement by the business community to articulate its broad support of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [www.nextgenscience.org]. Such endorsements are essential in convincing legislators that science standards cannot be held hostage to extremist groups who have an antipathy toward science that is almost medieval—whose mistrust of science is rooted in…

Kentucky Board of Education Stands Firm against Bullshit Science

At this time of the summer, when members of Congress return to their districts for town hall meetings often dominated by very vocal and very belligerent “Tea Party” activists, it is refreshing to see education officials in a conservative state resist pressures to make scientific standards conform to fundamentalist religious beliefs. Last week, the Kentucky…

Far Right Rhetorical Co-Opt, Item 1

One of the favorite rhetorical devices of those on the Far Right is to take a charge leveled against them by progressives, to co-opt the language used to articulate that charge, and then to reframe the debate with the co-opted language so that it seems that the logic of their position is not just credible…

How the Far Right Is Behaving like Communists

Certainly since Lyndon Johnson pushed through the social safety-net programs known collectively as the Great Society, but even since FDR began to create the first of those safety-net programs as part of his New Deal, the Far Right has been arguing vehemently that such programs are tantamount to communism, that they represent an unethical and…

Boards and the Senior Team

One of the best ways to determine where a college or university is headed is to look at the composition and quality of the senior administrative team that the president inherits on the first day in office. The look and feel – quite literally – of an inherited team speaks to the mindset and culture…

Belt Height as a Political Metaphor

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford are both conservative politicians with personalities as outsized as their physical selves. (How is that for a euphemistic way of saying that, like me, they are very fat?) But despite those broad similarities, their political fortunes, at least of late, could not be more different.…