BY MISSY WATSON I’m a teacher and user of standardized English who strives to deconstruct and contest standardized English. My classes regularly feature essays, textbooks, and research studies that reveal the oppressive and discriminatory results of assuming, consciously or not, that standardized English is superior to all other language varieties. Last year, I happened to…
BY JOHN W. LAWRENCE In an article published in the May/June 2018 issue of Academe entitled Student Evaluations of Teaching Are Not Valid, I briefly reviewed the literature on whether student evaluations of teaching (SET) are good measures of teaching effectiveness. They are not. First, SET scores reflect race, gender, age and other biases of…
BY BEN TRACHTENBERG The Godfather famously advised, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” Regardless of whether university trustees view faculty as friends, enemies, or something else altogether, they would be wise to pursue greater closeness with the people doing the teaching and research at their favorite campus. In particular, more universities should include…
BY HANK REICHMAN Today, May 22, two hundred tenured faculty members at the University of Southern California (USC) released an open letter to the school’s board of trustees calling for the resignation of university President C. L. Max Nikias, saying he had “lost the moral authority to lead” in the wake of revelations that a…
POSTED BY KELLY HAND May–June 2018 | Vol. 104, No. 3 Contributors to the new issue of Academe remind us that even in the face of attacks against higher education from the outside, it is from the inside that we must work to keep our colleges and universities the best in the world. Articles include discussions of…
BY SANDIE GRAVETT AND STELLA ANDERSON Last week, we formally launched our study Faculty Employment Rights and Hearing Procedures in Public Non-Union Universities by emailing a survey link to faculty members on the higher education campuses in the constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina. These 16 higher education campuses provide an excellent test…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The case of Jay Smith, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor whose course on college athletics was quashed by university administrators, has received considerable attention because it raises serious questions about academic freedom. Yet, as recent events attest, the case is also important on shared governance grounds. Specifically, it…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS Bread-bakers depend on the dough’s rest, during which time the yeast rises. The peasant farmer uses winter to carve wood or nail things together. Pickle-makers know it as the cure; those passing hours as the cucumber mysteriously turns pickle. Whatever. Hallmark-Channel-ey platitudes don’t play on the edgy, 24/7 adjunct reality show no…
BY HANK REICHMAN Even as the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, struggles to survive, another independent university in Budapest may pick up stakes and move in the face of continued hostility from the right-wing nationalist government of Viktor Orban. “We can’t go into another academic year like this. We’re in a holding pattern but…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last month I had the privilege and honor of addressing a colloquium of faculty and advanced graduate students at the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP), Russia, which offers advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences. My topic was “The AAUP and the Struggle for Academic Rights in the U.S.” The…