BY LISA MINNICK On the sixth anniversary of anti-union “right to work” legislation being signed into law in Michigan, we share this letter to Western Michigan University faculty from WMU-AAUP president Lisa Minnick, who is stepping down after serving in the role since 2013. The letter originally appeared on the chapter’s website, where there is…
BY MARTIN KICH This resolution was passed unanimously by the chapter leaders and members attending this year’s annual meeting in the Columbus suburb of Westerville. Whereas the Ohio College Opportunity Grant (OCOG) provides funding to low-income students to attend a four-year university, public or private, Whereas OCOG is not available to students who attend two-year…
BY MARTIN KICH Early last summer, Sherrod Brown’s senatorial campaign contacted the leadership of the Ohio Conference about what he could provide to us on his positions. The OCAAUP tries to limit its focus to issues related to higher-education and collective-bargaining rights. Senator Brown’s positions on labor issues are very well known, and after some…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This resolution was passed unanimously by the chapter leaders and members attending this year’s annual meeting in the Columbus suburb of Westerville. Whereas the state funding for public higher education has been declining for the last 30 years, Whereas the State Share of Instruction (SSI) accounts for only about 13 percent…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH A sub-title for this post might be: Student Debt, DACA, and the Ottoman Defeat at the Gates of Vienna. These items have been culled from Pro Publica’s Capitol Words: Granted, Gohmert and King are not only on the Far Right end of the political spectrum, but even among those at that…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND The AAUP released an open letter to US congressman Jeff Fortenberry letting him know that threatening and harassing faculty members is unacceptable after Fortenberry’s chief of staff harassed Ari Kohen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. After Kohen “liked” on Facebook an image of an altered…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Last year, North Carolina became one of the first states to adopt a so-called “campus free speech” law (S.L. 2017-196). This law, like similar legislation that has been proposed or approved in other states, was drafted by a partisan conservative think-tank and supported by sympathetic legislators. Premised on the dubious proposition…
This past weekend, I was invited by the National Association of Scholars to speak on a panel at their conference at Grove City College, “Capitol Ideas: Government Overreach and Higher Education.” As a progressive, I probably agreed with the title about fearing government overreach in higher education more than almost anyone there, and I spoke…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH One of the basic logical fallacies that composition teachers warn their students to avoid is argument by analogy. No one has ever accused California Governor Jerry Brown of being uneducated or unintelligent. But, all too often, Progressives have latched onto their own harebrained ideas about “reforming” education. Of course, political brainstorms…