Teaching Is Either a Profession or It’s Not

In a recent post to her blog, Diane Ravitch has reported on the ongoing effort to unionize the teachers in Detroit’s charter schools. At five of those schools, the AFT has held successful unionization campaigns. But when they attempted to organize the teachers at the seven University Prep Schools managed by Detroit 90/90, the school…

9/11 from the Perspective of an International Graduate Student

This is another guest post from Victoria Scott, an art historian. _________________________ I moved from Vancouver, Canada, via St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Binghamton, New York, population 47,376, to begin doctoral studies in art history at SUNY Binghamton August 8, 2001. I had been accepted at Cambridge and the Courtauld, but only Binghamton had offered funding:…

CU Scholar: An Open-Source Repository of Scholarship

A recent, relatively short article by Joshua Bolkan published in Campus Technology broadly describes a new initiative at the University of Colorado at Boulder: “The University of Colorado Boulder has gone public with its recent adoption of an open access policy. “As a result of the new policy, the university will have ‘nonexclusive, worldwide license to the…

Excellent Universities Begin with Excellent Faculty

The following article was published originally on the website of the AAUP chapter at the University of Akron, though it appears that the university will soon have a new name—and the article concerns that “rebranding.” The article is reprinted here with the permission of the chapter leadership. ________________________ On Friday, May 15, President Scarborough unveiled…

Politics and Profanity

Each year, there is a “roast” of the governor of New Jersey attending by politicians, journalists, and lobbyists. This year’s roast was held at the Hamilton banquet hall and was attended by about 350 people. When it was Chris Christie’s turn to speak, here is a sampling of what he had to say: About Bridgegate,…

Sometimes English Seems like a Foreign Language

Today’s HuffPost Hill news brief has this headline: “Buzzkill McPartyfoul Transitions to Skadden.” I believe that this is the news item that explains the headline: “WALL STREET FATCATS FOILED BY SCRAPPY STREET BAND – From the internal Skadden Arps email obtained by Above the Law this week: ‘As many of you are aware, a group of musicians have…

Affluence and Influence Are Always Relative

Curbed.com is a website specializing in interior design, décor, and real estate. You can receive a daily newsletter that typically features an expensive residence with some sort of unusual overall design or notable features or some intriguing aspects to its history. Yesterday, that daily newsletter featured this Long Island residence:   Here is the description…

Income Inequality in “College Towns”

Last November, Business Insider published a list of the 18 metro areas in the U.S. with the highest levels of income inequality. The rankings were based on the following methodology: “The Census Bureau makes annual estimates of a standard measure of inequality for US metropolitan areas. The Gini index is a measure, ranging between 0…