Image of the Day: Higher Ed-Related

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH   The photo appears in a 2014 post to the site The Syrup Trap. It is accompanied by this “news report”: VANCOUVER (The News Desk) — A coyote that has been seen wandering around the campus of the University of British Columbia has suddenly found himself with more than $21,000 in…

Creeping or Striding toward The Hunger Games?

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In the “Culture Matters” section of NBC ‘s website, Daniel Arkin has contributed on article on a new game show called Paid Off, on which contestants are college graduates with significant student debt compete to answer trivia questions, with the winner having at least some of his or her debt paid…

Wordplay V: (Mostly) Politics Edition

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In this series, I have highlighted headlines that are cleverly expressed, making use of puns, irony, figurative language, or unexpected word choices to grab a reader’s attention. Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has so unabashedly flouted all sorts of political conventions that headline writers have felt freer to write headlines that…

More on #MeToo Activism in Latin America

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The 13 July 2018 issue of University World News includes Maria Elena Hurtado’s article “Ten Universities Still Occupied in Fight to End Machismo”: The so-called ‘feminist wave’, started in mid-April, that took over by force 22 Chilean universities or faculties in demand for improved sexual harassment protocols, better conditions for female…

The University as Anxiety Machine

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In the online journal published by Still Point Spaces, Andrea Brady has written a lengthy, three-part personal essay on the “University as Anxiety Machine.” The essay should resonate with many academics in the U.S., as well as those in other nations. Here is the opening section: It was Welcome Week at…

Erdogan Assumes More Direct Control over Turkish Universities

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Over the past decade, the Erdogan regime in Turkey has been targeting opposition groups, especially in the military, the judiciary, the news media, and academia. These attacks escalated dramatically after the attempted coup in July 2016. Despite the widespread repression, Erdogan managed only a relatively narrow victory in the most recent…

Summer Series: Scenes from #AAUPSI at UNH

BY KELLY HAND The AAUP’s national office is quieter than usual because many of our staff are at the University of New Hampshire in Durham for the AAUP/AAUP-CBC Summer Institute, which begins today. Over two hundred faculty and academic activists will gather for four days of workshops and special programs to build their skills as…