An Interesting Series of Articles on Australian Higher Education
The Conversation is an Australian website that seeks to synthesize academic and journalistic inquiry in order to provide very thoughtful commentary of Australian and international issues. Its mission statement includes the following principles: to inform public debate with knowledge-based journalism that is responsible, ethical and supported by evidence; to unlock the knowledge of researchers and academics to…
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…
Climate-Change Skepticism and the Economic Impact of Climate-Change Research
This week, University World News includes two items on climate-change research. The first is a summary of a news article that appeared in Science: “The Australian government’s controversial move to host a think tank headed by noted global warming sceptic Bjørn Lomborg has unraveled-–for now. But Australia’s education minister has vowed to find a new…
Sometimes It Takes the Persistence of Sisyphus to Get Collective Bargaining Rights
In June 2004, the full-time faculty at Point Park University voted overwhelmingly to join the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, or CWA Local 38061, making it the first Guild local to represent faculty at a major university. This week, the National Labor Relations Board issued this ruling, rejecting the university administration’s arguments on why it should…
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…