BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Multiple media reports appeared last week about the efforts by American cities, backed by their state governments, to lure the merchandizing giant Amazon’s second global headquarters to their regions. The company will entertain proposals until October 19. Amazon set general parameters and has a history in Seattle that forecasts what mix…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the New York Times, Anna Dubenko has gathered reactions from the Left, Right, and Center to Betsy DeVos’ proposal to revamp Title IX enforcement. From the Right David French in the National Review: “Our campuses are not exempt from the Constitution. There is no excuse for government-mandated kangaroo courts…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Consortium News, Robert Parry provides an extended contrast between Harvard’s bowing to political pressure by withdrawing a visiting professorship offered to Chelsea Manning and its failure to reconsider a similar appointment given to former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell,who resigned his own fellowship in protest and denounced Manning as…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH All state budget impasses do not have the same causes, but, at the risk of oversimplification, there are basically two main categories of causes. The first is fiscal irresponsibility that involves overspending on special-interest projects and underfunding of major continuing costs. The second is fiscal irresponsibility that places such a priority…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following podcasts are available from New Yorker: The Antifa Handbook The author of a new book about the leftist movement explains why its members will resort to violence as a form of political action. Long a Bastion of Free Speech, U.C. Berkeley’s Commitment Is Tested In the wake of Charlottesville,…
BY HANK REICHMAN It’s a pretty safe assumption that a trans woman like Chelsea Manning, who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified documents revealing U.S. government involvement in torture, is not someone who can normally expect to be named a Visiting Fellow at Harvard. But on Wednesday the university’s John F. Kennedy…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a letter addressed to the UC Berkeley campus and the larger Berkeley community, 76 faculty members from various departments have called for a complete boycott of classes and campus activities during the so-called “Free Speech Week” to be held on campus September 24-27. The week is sponsored by the Berkeley Patriot,…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new September–October issue of Academe focuses on a profession that increasingly finds itself “in the crosshairs.” Articles address recent and historical instances of targeted harassment of faculty, the obligations of tenure-track faculty toward colleagues on contingent appointments, and the suppression of a course scrutinizing collegiate athletics. Follow the links in…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for IndyWeek, which serves the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, Erica Hellerstein reports: After months of contentious back-and-forth, the UNC Board of Governors voted this morning [Friday, September 8] to ban the UNC Center for Civil Rights from doing legal work on behalf of the state’s poor and minority…
POSTED BY THE AAUP Alarmed by news that the University of Tampa has fired a faculty member over a tweet suggesting that Hurricane Harvey was “karma” for Texas because it voted Republican, the AAUP has been in contact with the affected faculty member, Kenneth Storey. Our understanding is that Storey, a visiting assistant professor of…