An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a conference held at the libertarian Cato Institute promoting a report from the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which concludes that conservative-leaning academic centers on college and university campuses founded by wealthy donors “are not just surviving but thriving.” The report estimates…
The Board of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies on Tuesday released a “detailed clarification” of its controversial decision to reject an offer by Professor Stephen F. Cohen, his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and the KAT Foundation to fund a dissertation research fellowship program named for Cohen and his late mentor, Robert…
This item was distributed by The Hill several days ago, on January 21: NOT A LOAD OF A BALONEY: Senators voted 98-1 that “climate change is real and not a hoax.” I repeat “not a hoax!” The bipartisan vote caught Democrats off guard as many thought a majority of Republicans would vote against the amendment, which will now be attached to underlying…
In response to the current spell of frigid weather, the new services have pulled out the usual graphics intended to make us shiver even when we are snug inside our warm homes: But the most original and most chilling frigid-weather graphic that I have seen comes from the Takoma Park Patch in Maryland: To put…
On December 9, James McNair, writing for Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, has explored the many implications of a pending gift from the Koch Brothers and Poppa John’s CEO John Schnatter to the University of Louisville. The article, the full text of which is available at http://kycir.org/2014/12/09/university-of-louisville-set-to-get-millions-from-charles-koch-foundation-and-papa-johns-ceo/, opens: “Declines in state appropriations and negative financial trends…
A new post on Retraction Watch, “Peer review isn’t good at ‘dealing with exceptional or unconventional submissions,’ says study,” quotes the authors of the study of the title: Because most new ideas tend to be bad ideas, resisting unconventional contributions may be a reasonable and efficient default instinct for evaluators. However, this is potentially problematic because unconventional work…
Let’s face it: The traditional peer-review process was not meant for a digital age. It needs to be altered (not abandoned) so that it once again has a consistently useful function, working as something other than a wall to be breached. It needs to help move the best of scholarship to the fore while providing…
This is a guest post by Rebecca Jordan, a contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Jordan is an associate professor of environmental education and citizen science, and director of the program in science learning at Rutgers University. Her interests are in Behavioral Biology, Learning, Development of Cognitive Models, and Public Understanding in Science. …
This is a guest post by Joshua M. Pearce, an online contributor to the recent November-December issue of Academe. Pearce is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Unfortunately, the simplistic thinking that uses “research expenditures” as a proxy…
The elite scholarly journals, long the gatekeepers of the ivory tower, have been losing their effectiveness this last decade or so–in their gatekeeping role, at least. As these journals increasingly become profit centers in the corporate publishing industry, their real impact is constricted to only those who can afford the toll. At the same time,…