BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TENURE-STREAM ART HISTORY FACULTY The statement was issued on January 13 on the website of the UMN Department of Art History with the note, “No images other than the painting of Jonah and the Whale appear in this story.” The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN I previously posted this in 2016. The following was written by Martin Luther King, Jr. and first published in the February 1947 edition of the Morehouse College Student Newspaper. King was 18 years old. As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find…
BY ALEX SMALL Breathe easy, everyone. We physicists have a strategy to help all students pass tough introductory classes. Hear me out. An administrator recently said that more students would pass freshman physics if faculty gave more frequent and early feedback. Students could study more effectively if they had some way to gauge their understanding…
BY KRIS BOUDREAU AND MARK RICHMAN In her recent survey of a handful of research universities that have improved conditions for their teaching faculty—particularly those that provide job stability and paths for professional advancement—the Chronicle’s Becky Supiano suggests that while such a “teaching track” distinct from a tenure track can “elevate undergraduate instruction and the…
BY HARVEY J. GRAFF We live in a new age of division. Universities are so often centers of differences, contradictions, and clashes between knowledge and ignorance. One revealing site is the false opposition of the faculty and the—to faculty and academic administration—second-class “professionals” in departments of student affairs and student life. Critically, this dichotomy parallels…
BY JONATHAN REES I’m a member of the AAUP Committee on Teaching, Research, and Publication. Last week, committee chair Hank Reichman and I convened a listening session at the AAUP biennial meeting to start the long process of revising the organization’s statement regarding online education. The existing Statement on Online and Distance Education dates from…
BY ALICE BROWN One of the first articles published by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2022 asked, “Who Wants to Be a College President?” Author Eric Kelderman writes that recent changes in higher education have led to a shift in the qualities boards seek in a new president. One change he describes is that…
BY DAVID A. VAREL When I was an undergraduate at a liberal arts college in the early 2000s, our student evaluations were all qualitative. We were asked to write short essays describing our experience in our courses—what worked, what didn’t, what could be improved. It was clear from this design that the chief audience was…
BY FRANK E. RITTER AND DONALD A. DONAHUE We will need to continue to protect ourselves from COVID-19, probably through spring 2022. Colleges and universities have long been recognized as places of increased risk for communicable diseases. While higher education has benefited from immunization mandates against “childhood diseases” in primary and secondary schools, they have…
BY HANK REICHMAN In a January 2018 political philosophy class at Shawnee State University in Ohio Professor Nicholas Meriwether addressed a trans woman as “sir.” It was an accident, but when the student approached him after class to request that she be called “Ms.” like other women in the class, Meriwether refused, claiming that his…