More on the Proposed California Higher Ed Budget

Yesterday I posted a piece on California Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, with specific reference to higher education.  Today UCLA History professor Michael Meranze posted his response to the Brown proposal on the Remaking the University blog that he runs with UC Santa Barbara English professor Christopher Newfield.  Michael’s take is similar to mine, but…

Murder Is Our Peculiar Pastime: Fifty Notable American Crime Novels: 15-16

  Crumley, James.  The Last Good Kiss.  New York: Random House, 1978. Like the novelist Robert Stone, James Crumley has synthesized the conventions of the hardboiled tradition with elements of counterculture fiction.  In his mystery-detective novels, he has alternated between two Montana detectives, C. W. Sughrue and Milo Milodragovitch, though the two detectives join forces…

Back to School in Higher Ed: Who Needs Faculty

This past fall, I somehow failed to post this notice on the most recent working paper published by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE). The CFHE website is located at http://futureofhighered.org/ _________________________ Executive Summary Although 50 years of research has shown that faculty/student interaction is crucial to student success, recent trends and…

It Was a Very Safe Derisive Comment

Two days ago, I wrote a post titled “You Get What You Pay For Even When You’re Thinking Outside the Box: An Addendum to Brian Mitchell’s Post on an ‘Innovative’ Pricing Strategy from Maine” [https://academeblog.org/2016/01/06/you-get-what-you-pay-for-even-when-youre-thinking-outside-the-box-an-addendum-to-brian-mitchells-post-on-an-innovative-pricing-strategy-from-maine/]. The post closed: “With more specific reference to what is occurring in Maine, a state cannot hope to sustain a…

black and white outline pf student protest

Ridiculous and Effective Ways to Occupy Spaces

In Oregon, self-designated militiamen have been occupying a federal nature center that had been closed for the winter. This act of civil disobedience is being led by two of Cliven Bundy’s sons, who are singularly inept and inarticulate. The Bundys are not from Oregon. They are acting on behalf of two ranchers who don’t know…

Censuring Trump, Abroad and Here in the U.S.

In an article written for the New York Times, Dan Bilefsky has reported that “Donald J. Trump has threatened to abandon plans to invest more than $1 billion in Scotland if Britain bars him from entering the country over his comments that Muslim foreigners should not be allowed into the United States.” (Permit me a digression. I cannot help…

Historians Against the War v. Opponents of Pro-Academic Freedom in Palestine Resolution

The American Historical Association will be considering a resolution tomorrow at its annual meeting that condemns the absence of academic freedom for professors and students in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Some 126 historians signed the Historians Against the War (HAW) resolution. There has been organised protest against the resolution from groups…