POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier this month the Canadian Association of University Teachers released results of the first national survey of contract academic staff, which is what Canadian universities call faculty hired on contingent non-tenure-track appointments. The findings of the report, Out of the Shadows: Experiences of Contract Academic Staff, will be familiar to U.S.…
BY AARON BARLOW Writing in InsideHigherEd, Rebecca Gould claims that mandatory retirement at 65 would be “a good first step toward dismantling hierarchies and opening opportunities for many more young scholars.” The assumption, of course, is that young scholars are of more value than older ones. And that older scholars don’t need opportunities. Oh, and that senior academics…
BY JOAN W. SCOTT Threats to academic freedom abound the world over and it is dismaying to confront one crisis situation after another. The latest news comes from Birzeit University, in the West Bank. Professors there, and at other Palestinian universities in the Occupied Territories, who hold foreign passports have been prevented by the Israeli…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL A fellow trustee for whom I have great respect responded to my recent column about the value of the liberal arts. I had argued that the liberal arts teach college students how to think by training them how to write, articulate, apply quantitative methods, use technology, and work in a collaborative…
BY BILL MULLEN WITH “LISA BARRISTER” In May of 2017, Purdue University announced that it had purchased Kaplan University, an on-line University, with the intention to turn it into a part of Purdue University. Since that time, Kaplan has been renamed Purdue Global University, and has already graduated its first group of students. Criticism of…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN To restore the profession of teaching in the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the Colorado Conference of the AAUP has released the first of a series of videos showcasing the mounting, explosive, labor exploitation issue facing the 13-college CCCS. The video, Secrets, Scams, and Scandals: The Dirty Little Secrets of the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The short answer is to tie tenure to measures of administrative incompetence. But before I elaborate on that linkage, let me acknowledge that I am taking a second shot at pitching our chapter’s petition of support to the readers of this blog. The petition was designed for a more generic audience…
BY AARON BARLOW David Horowitz, whose attacks on “professors” caused a great deal of concern among the American faculty a decade ago, is back in the news in relation to Florida Gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, who spoke at a number of Horowitz’s Freedom Center conferences. DeSantis is quoted in the Washington Post from a conference speech…
BY AARON BARLOW Most everything I’ve read about NYU’s Avital Ronell misses what should be the most significant point of the messy affair. Yes, Ronell should not be defended in knee-jerk fashion nor piled on by acrimonious former colleagues. Nor is it enough to bemoan the impact of the case on the classroom. What we really…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Wright State faculty and students need your support. Right now, the stakes at Wright State have never been higher— over the past several years, our students, the local workforce, and the region’s economy have been harmed by the administration’s poor stewardship. And now that this administration has exhausted the financial resources…