This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education published an excellent and important article by Beth McMurtrie entitled, “Nearly a Year Later, Fallout From Salaita Case Lingers on Campuses.” It is definitely worth reading, and not just because I’m quoted in it several times. The article also provides an opportunity for some further reflection on the…
Bloch, Robert. Psycho. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. The enduring popularity of Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation has insured that Psycho will remain the novvel with which Robert Bloch is most identified. Much of the substantial body of work that Bloch produced belongs to the horror genre and other categories of speculative fiction. Despite its…
In an op-ed published by the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, James Baar identifies “Four Crises That Dog Higher Education”: 1. Inflation of product cost. 2. Deflation of product value. 3. Enablement of social and moral dissolution. 4. Lower-priced, knockoff and fraudulent competition. Given the space constraints on most op-ed pieces, Baar addresses each of…
On March 3 the board of trustees of Sweet Briar College, a small liberal arts college for women in rural Virginia, made the shocking announcement that the school would close at the end of the academic year. After nearly four months of intense fund-raising and legal maneuvering, however, the college was saved. Under the terms…
By Elena Levy-Navarro, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater I write this as the state house leaders announce they have reached an agreement over the Wisconsin budget. If it is agreed upon on Thursday, they will craft the final bill. As of now, all we know about the discussions is what has been reported: namely, that…
According to the Champaign, Illinois News-Gazette, Steven G. Salaita has accepted a position with the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. See here. Most academics rarely recover from a summary dismissal, particularly when ethical and moral sentiments are expressed that induce controversy. Perhaps, the national attention that this tenure travesty generated may have facilitated this positive development,…
The US Supreme Court will hear the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, where some anti-union high school teachers are trying to avoid paying an agency fee to the union that represents them, as part of the so-called “right to work” campaign. Let’s ignore for a moment the devastating effects such a ruling against…
An article on Inside Higher Ed today, on the threat to faculty unions through a case on its way to the Supreme Court, includes this: “If the Supreme Court rules that ‘fair share’ violates the First Amendment rights of public employees, they would transform the entire public sector into right to work, more appropriately named ‘right to…
British scholar Sara Ahmed writes in The New Inquiry (with a slightly earlier and very little different version on her own blog, feministkilljoys) an essay entitled “Against Students.” She starts out: What do I mean by “against students”? By using this expression I am trying to describe a series of speech acts which consistently position…