BY MARTIN KICH As Big Data begins to define our obsessive discussion of politics and our universities respond to the demand for specialists by developing graduate programs in the discipline, it is easy to feel as if we are swimming or, rather, drowning in data—that there is so much data that instead of providing clarity,…
BY KAILEY ADKINS Students and faculty have been clear: George Mason University must begin reviewing all of their future donor agreements for conflicts of interest and make them more transparent to the public. The Provost at George Mason University will be presenting his recommendations to the university’s board to improve gift acceptance policies next Wednesday.…
BY MARTIN KICH The Atlantic has released its annual compilation of the top 25 news photos. (Over three days, they are following up with three sets of 25 other photos highlighting news stories from throughout the year.) Five of the 25 photos have a connection to education-related stories. They include a photo of Christine Blasey-Ford being…
BY MARTIN KICH When I first drafted this post about a week ago, I did not realize that the Trump administration’s talking points on the Mueller investigation would so quickly boil down to the following: (1) if the president is now openly admitting what he previously lied about, then there is no subterfuge and therefore…
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 State support for public higher education—or, more precisely, the decline in such support—remains a persistent and significant issue. It continues to exacerbate the level of debt that students are assuming to get degrees (or often to pursue degrees that they do not manage to complete) and constricting the number of faculty…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has stated that he is considering a run for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He has been widely quoted as asserting that if the Democrats want win again in 2020, they need to support working people in a broad variety of ways—most fundamentally by supporting collective bargaining…
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 MARTIN KICH (I’d like to forestall objections by Canadians by noting that Charles and Daniel Krauthammer, whose columns are the topic of this post, seem to interested very little in making an argument for the origins of the holiday and much more interested in exploring what its meaning is for Americans.) Daniel Krauthammer,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This news announcement is from Politico: The Pentagon is set to begin a drawdown of its 5,800 troops from the Southwest border as early as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told POLITICO — even as the approaching caravan of refugees prompted U.S. customs officers to close a port…