BY JAMES FERRY When I submitted my piece for the September-October issue of Academe, “How the Academy Saved My Soul—and Maybe My Life,” I figured that, at best, I might end up guest blogging. So being asked to blog about my feature article feels a bit…weird. I’d much rather blog about why I lacked “contributor…
BY HANK REICHMAN A little more than a year ago the Chancellor of the California State University system (CSU) issued two executive orders governing general education and remediation. The directives, prepared and released without appropriate faculty input, were immediately controversial. In October 2017, the California Faculty Association (CFA), an AAUP-affiliate representing over 27,000 CSU faculty…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND September–October 2018 | Vol. 104, No. 5 This issue of Academe explores the theme of “otherness” in our college and university communities from a variety of perspectives. Articles discuss topics such as fighting back against the marginalization of faculty, pursuing an academic career after serving time in prison, being a woman…
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…