BY HANK REICHMAN Last week The Atlantic magazine announced a year-long reporting project, “The Speech Wars,” exploring questions of American free expression and public discourse. It is funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute. According to the magazine, “The project will unfold across TheAtlantic.com,…
MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The bold print of UNC-Chapel Hill’s decision earlier this week to build a $5.3 million museum for “Silent Sam,” the controversial Confederate statue, was bad enough. But as people have had time to read the report released by the campus’s Board of Trustees on Monday, December 3, it has become apparent that…
BY MARTIN KICH The Atlantic has released its annual compilation of the top 25 news photos. (Over three days, they are following up with three sets of 25 other photos highlighting news stories from throughout the year.) Five of the 25 photos have a connection to education-related stories. They include a photo of Christine Blasey-Ford being…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT On Monday, December 3, the Chancellor and Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill delivered their formal plan for what to do with “Silent Sam,” the controversial Confederate statue. They managed to formulate a decision that was almost perfect in its absurdity. To lay to rest…
BY MARTIN KICH So writes Richard Vedder, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University, in an article for Forbes. What follows is the opening paragraph, which is essentially an overview of the main points of his argument: A good case can be made that males are discriminated against on college campuses, and the discrimination has…
BY MARTIN KICH One of the biggest issues for just about every AAUP collective-bargaining unit in the country is healthcare costs. Most of our institutions are self-insured, and although good benefits packages have long been one of the salient advantages of public-sector employment in general, many of our institutions have been trying to move employees…
BY MARTIN KICH When I first drafted this post about a week ago, I did not realize that the Trump administration’s talking points on the Mueller investigation would so quickly boil down to the following: (1) if the president is now openly admitting what he previously lied about, then there is no subterfuge and therefore…
BY MARTIN KICH This resolution was passed unanimously by the chapter leaders and members attending this year’s annual meeting in the Columbus suburb of Westerville. Whereas the Ohio College Opportunity Grant (OCOG) provides funding to low-income students to attend a four-year university, public or private, Whereas OCOG is not available to students who attend two-year…
BY HANK REICHMAN If you’re an academic on Twitter, especially an historian, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered and perhaps even followed Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse. As the Pacific Standard put it introducing an interview with him, “Over the last few years, Kruse and other experts have been bringing evidence and expertise to well-curated…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Faculty at public institutions in many states are experiencing declining real salaries. This is particularly true in states where legislators are hostile to public higher education on principle. North Carolina is one such state. Faculty salaries in the University of North Carolina system have stagnated since the 2008 crisis. The past…