A Second Step in Missouri
R. Bowen Loftin, the chancellor of the University of Missouri’s flagship campus at Columbia, will resign, the University of Missouri System’s Board of Curators announced just hours after the system’s president stepped down amid intense student and other protests over racial tensions. Loftin will become the system’s director for research facility development. Although most of…
College of Charleston Appoints Provost Over Faculty Protests
Amid growing outrage among faculty about secretive presidential searches (see here and, for an AAUP statement, here), the College of Charleston in South Carolina recently appointed a new provost over complaints from faculty who say they were not consulted in the decision-making process, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. The position of provost, the institution’s…
College Professors Paid Shamefully Low Wages
The following is excerpted from a column by Albor Ruiz published today in the New York Daily News: If you thought only fast food workers, home attendants and the like were abused and exploited by their employers and were willing to protest and risk arrest for demanding their rights, think again. College professors — an…
A First Step in Missouri
Note: I was writing this post before John Wilson posted his reaction to the Wolfe resignation. As should be clear, our perspectives differ. As the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed once more to rule on a case involving the consideration of race in college admissions, a wave of protest against campus racism by minority students…
Tim Wolfe Resigns from the University of Missouri
Tim Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri, resigned this morning under intense pressure. I’m still trying to figure out what Wolfe did wrong. The racism on campus seems no different from a thousand other campuses, or the rest of our society. The response of Wolfe to that racism, with indifference, platitudes, and apologies, also…
An Open Letter to My Colleagues at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Nan Enstad, UW-Madison When I first arrived at UW Madison fourteen years ago, the renowned history professor emeritus (now deceased), Gerda Lerner, said to me in her thick, Austrian accent, “UW Madison is a world-class university. Into any field you venture, any new project you take on, you will find that there is a national…
ASCSU Resolution on Presidential Searches
The following resolution was approved unanimously by the Academic Senate, California State University (ASCSU) at its November 6 plenary meeting in Long Beach, California. On November 3, the AAUP issued its own Statement on Presidential Searches. ACADEMIC SENATE OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AS-3234-15/EX November 4-5, 2015 PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH PROCESS IN THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY…
Asking for a Friend: Is it Me or is it My Campus?
Photo: Stephen Kuusisto walking in academic convocation at Syracuse University with his guide dog Nira By Stephen Kuusisto I’m borrowing my title from Liza Featherstone’s new advice column in The Nation which is entitled: “Asking for a Friend: Is It Me or is it Capitalism?” Oh the sang froid of self help! One scarcely knows…
Workers' Control in Academia.
I was a labor historian earlier in my career. Sadly, I hardly ever get to teach that subject anymore because the class never fills. However, the lessons that most of the best labor historians I read during graduate school described in their work have never left me. Indeed, they seem more relevant to my own…