Bipartisan Rationality or Shared Alarm?
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Much has been written about “fake news,” about the political ramifications of charging that something is “fake news,” and about the broader undermining of the public confidence in the credibility of the news media. Moreover, in the seemingly endless discussion of certain news stories and with the proliferation of social…
Irony (or “Charlie Foxtrot”) of the Day
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Under the heading “Trump’s Fraud Commission Has Big Problems,” Vox has offered the following summaries of those problems, with links to articles providing more detail: During and after the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump released a relentless stream of allegations of widespread voter fraud across the country, with no evidence to…
Louisiana Governor Vetoes Ill-Conceived “Free Speech” Legislation
BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of a series of incidents in which provocative and often offensive individuals, mostly from the right side of the political spectrum, have been prevented from speaking at college and university campuses, a number of state legislators have proposed — and a few have passed — legislation that would ostensibly…
Higher Ed Week Will Be Here before You Know It
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Trump administration has been designating a theme for each week—most recently, Infrastructure Week, Workforce Development Week, and, this week’s rendition, Technology Week. (I recognize that Workforce Development Week involved a much-publicized visit to a community college, but I doubt that Trump, DeVos, or anyone else in his administration would see…
Education First: Ohio Higher Education Report for 2016-2017, Part 3
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the third section of the most recent higher education report produced by the Ohio Conference of AAUP. John McNay, the President of the Conference, and Sara Kilpatrick, the Executive Director of the Conference, deserves kudos for doing the bulk of the work on this report. The report has…
Coda to Today’s Shooting in Arlington
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This morning, Paul Ryan eloquently and passionately asked members of Congress and the citizens whom they represent to look beyond partisan political divisions and to focus, instead, much more than we almost ever do, on the fundamental values that most of us profess to cherish. Unfortunately, the Far Right media has…
Trump Abandonment of Paris Climate Accord is Call to Action for Higher Education
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL On June 1, President Trump announced that he was taking the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, making the U.S., Syria, and Nicaragua (which felt the deal was not sufficiently ambitious), the only nations not to support the agreement. The Paris Agreement sets a series of goals and is…
Justifying Greed
BY AARON BARLOW I’ve been told, and by people I respect, not to use the word “neoliberal,” especially when dealing with education–let alone politics. “It is too amorphous,” they say. “It doesn’t really mean anything; it’s just something to rail against.” That has changed. Not only that but, today, we can no longer keep neoliberalism…
Larry Summers Is Right About This Investment Advice
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL There is some truth to the saying that those who fail to learn from the past will be doomed to repeat it. Essentially, this was the message that former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers delivered recently as part of his larger concern that Massachusetts not become complacent despite U.S. unemployment hitting a…