Swarthout, Glendon. The Shootist. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975. Glendon Swartout’s achievement has been recognized with a number of prestigious awards: the Theatre Guild Playwriting Award in 1947; the Hopwood Award in Fiction in 1948; the O. Henry Prize for the Short Story in 1960; the National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal…
Mary Ellen Mazey, the President of Bowling Green State University, recently contributed an op-ed to the Toledo Blade. The op-ed is titled “Affordable Higher Education Is Key to Ohio’s Future.” In the op-ed, President Mazey addresses several realities that have been repeatedly highlighted over the last quarter century—that is, for as long as I have…
This past week, an Egyptian court sentenced to death former president Mohammed Morsi, along with 130 other defendants, for their participation in a mass jailbreak and their roles in subsequent attacks on the police and the military that led to the overthrow of the government of Hosni Mubarek. This sentence comes on the heels of…
Those who insist that “Deflategate” as a news story of national importance. Those who speculate with any level of seriousness whether it is possible that George Zimmerman may be simply a victim of repeated ill will or bad luck. Those who wonder out loud whether Bruce Jenner’s coming out as transgender means that he will…
Mrs. Obama’s commencement address has drawn criticism from the Far Right because she focused on the ways in which she, as First Lady, has been racially caricatured by not just her husband’s political opponents but by even the “mainstream” media. Once again, an attempt to focus much-needed attention on what should be fairly obvious and…
In a column last week Los Angeles Times op-ed writer Michael Hiltzik (whose work is almost always a must-read) exposed the fraud behind the latest assault on the political activity of teacher unions. It involves a lawsuit, Bain v. California Teachers Association et. al, which purports to defend the “free speech” rights of its plaintiffs,…
On January 30, I posted an item to this blog under the title “The Troubling Case of Professor Stephen Cohen and the American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.” The post recounted the background to a decision by the Association’s Board to reject an offer by Professor Stephen F. Cohen, his wife, Katrina vanden…
From the Conclusions of the report, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Felician College (New Jersey)”, May, 2015: In terminating the appointments of sixteen fulltime faculty members, seven of whom sought the Association’s assistance, the administration of Felician College attributed its action simply to “the exigency of the college’s financial status” without any further explanation. The administration’s…
From the Conclusions of the report, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: The University of South Maine” of May, 2015: In terminating the appointments of sixty of the 250 full-time faculty members and eliminating, reducing, or consolidating numerous academic programs, allegedly on financial grounds, the administration of the University of Southern Maine acted in flagrant violation of…