BY JOYCE MILAMBILING Guest blogger Joyce Milambiling is professor and coordinator of the TESOL/applied linguistics graduate program in the Department of Languages and Literatures at the University of Northern Iowa. Applications for sabbaticals at my university are due next month. The process is competitive, the number of paid leaves for one or two semesters is limited,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for AlterNet, Alex Kotch explains in great detail “Charles Koch’s Six-Step Guide to Founding a Free-Market Center at Your University.” The article is based on recordings made at a Koch-sponsored conference. Here is a substantial portion of the introductory section of Kotch’s article: “Since 1980, the family foundations of billionaire…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This item appeared in the HuffPost Hill daily newsletter for September 8, 2016: WHAT YOUR REPUBLICAN UNCLE WILL BE EMAILING YOU IN A WEEK OR SO–Seth Borenstein: “It’s no Nobel Peace Prize, but Barack Obama has a new honor to brag about. Scientists have named a parasite after him—and there’s no worming…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This post originally appeared on the blog Talking Union [https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/]. Paul Garver, the editor of that blog, on which some of my labor-related posts to this blog have been re-posted, has asked that I disseminate it as widely as possible. As the note at the bottom makes clear, it had already…
BY AARON BARLOW When I first heard the term “Digital Humanities” a decade ago, it seemed like something brewed up for use by those who want to poison the humanities—still does. It appeared to be nothing more than something developed by those with a little knowledge of C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the…
BY HANK REICHMAN Advocates of academic freedom generally find freedom of information laws beneficial. Such laws enhance public knowledge and debate on the workings of government agencies, including public universities. But as a 2013 amicus brief filed by the AAUP and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) pointed out, “in evaluating disclosure under FOIA, the public’s right to know…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Scott D. Miller, the President of Virginia Wesleyan University, has written a guest column for the Virginian-Pilot with the same title as this post. After providing an overview of what a university president’s summer routine typically involves, he writes: “Then there’s this summer — which to me is exceptionally hot, volatile,…
BY AARON BARLOW Over the past few years, I’ve become less and less enthusiastic about grants as a funding mechanism for higher-education-related projects. It’s not just the Koch brothers and their use of grants to promote particular ideologies but even the gentler tugs by funders such as the NEH toward consideration of particular arenas or inclusion…
BY HANK REICHMAN Let’s face it, the pharmaceutical industry has one heck of an image problem. Even if it is recognized that the notorious and now-indicted Martin Shkreli, who raised the cost of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was really an exception, price-gouging and the accumulation of excessive profit are charges regularly and…