In one of my recent reviews of recent news items on higher education [https://academeblog.org/2015/10/23/u-s-higher-education-news-from-september-29-2015/], I opened with an item on the elimination of continuing contracts for faculty at Florida State College. Now the member of the college’s board of trustees who initiated that change of policy has been emboldened to advance a proposal that faculty…
What’s the point of calling academia, or an association of academics like the AAUP, “too liberal”? Doing so always has a political goal; it’s an attempt to make academia—or the organization—more conservative. It’s never an unbiased or objective (whatever that means) complaint; it is part of an agenda to transform academia into one’s own image and…
Two days ago, Hank Reichman did a post on the anti-science bias on the House Science Committee. In the Ohio House, we now have a parallel situation. Here is how Diane Ravitch has described the new chairperson of the House Education Committee: “State Representative Andrew Brenner recently became chairman of Ohio’s House Education Committee. His…
This is an op-ed written by John McNay, president of the Ohio Conference, and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Gov. John Kasich’s task force on affordability and efficiency in higher education released its recommendations to the General Assembly recently, and the results were to be expected. The task force was headed by Geoff Chatas,…
I was associated with the University of Connecticut for almost 25 years before I learned that I did not have academic freedom. Naively I had assumed that all American institutions of higher learning, except some small religious colleges, guaranteed academic freedom. I had hoped that the current contract negotiations between UConn’s trustees and its chapter…
As part of Campus Equity Week, Brave New Films has released this terrific short film about the very real poverty of many faculty in contingent positions: Contains some illuminating stats comparing presidential salaries to adjunct wages, and personal stories from adjuncts–mostly women, which reflects the reality that contingent labor issues are also women’s issues. It’s…
[F]or those of us who think that universities exist for academic purposes — to teach academic knowledge and skills, to pass on academic virtues, and to sustain academic research — the stakes could not be higher. [former Secretary of Education under George Bush and newly appointed head of the University of North Carolina system Margaret]…
Marty Kich has already blogged about GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson’s advocacy of campus censorship of free expression despite his shallow and hypocritical railing against the perils of “political correctness.” But I can’t resist piling on. Let’s recall that the retired right-wing neurosurgeon’s claim last week was that unlike other right-wing fanatics he doesn’t want…
In a must-read article published yesterday on vox.com, David Roberts argues that “The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee.” “The Benghazi committee is not even the worst committee in the House,” Roberts contends. “I’d argue that the House science committee, under the chairmanship of Lamar Smith (R-TX), deserves that superlative for its…
T. E. Hulme was an English thinker who achieved some notice during the decade before the First World War, the conflict that would take his life. Though his positions would change over his short career (he was 34 when he died), Hulme was driven by the tensions between the individual and the community and between…