BY JOHN K. WILSON A funny thing happened during comedian Hannibal Buress’s set at Loyola University of Chicago on March 17: The Administration cut off his mic. And then when Buress tried to continue his performance unamplified, the Administration turned up the music to drown him out. Eventually, Buress was allowed to return to the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
BY HANK REICHMAN Two recent U.S. appellate court rulings, from the U.S Courts of Appeal for the Ninth and Fourth Circuits, mark victories for the free speech rights of striking teachers and of students. In the Ninth Circuit case, Eagle Point Education Association/SOBC/OEA; Dave Carrell; Staci Boyer v. Jackson County School District No. 9, decided…
BY HANK REICHMAN Prominent among the cascade of remarkable events in the incredible year of 1968 were a series of student rebellions, the most prominent of which was the uprising at Columbia University in April and May, in which I participated and about which I will have more to post next month. But the first…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Inside Higher Education has released its annual “Survey of College and University Presidents.” The results, which cover a wide variety of topics, are revealing if not surprising. There are too many individual findings to discuss in a single article; therefore, we’ll concentrate on the findings that deal most directly with the state…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH One of the neologisms related to the Trump administration with the most pernicious implications may be the phrase “task traitor.” It refers to the appointment of cabinet secretaries and other executive officers who have a deep-seated antipathy toward the departments and agencies that that are being appointed to head. Although I…
BY NICHOLAS FLEISHER The following is reposted with permission from the LanguagePolitics blog of Nicholas Fleisher, associate professor of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an active member of the AAUP. For previous discussions on the Academe blog of recent events in the University of Wisconsin system see here and here. UW-Stevens Point has…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following are two excerpts from an article compiled by the staff of the magazine The Week. The article provides a succinct overview of how the National Rifle Association has evolved, and it is worth reading in full. But I found these two excerpts (which are not sequential) especially enlightening because…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This post is a response to an article written by Susan Svriuga for the Washington Post. Titled “’Antifa Is Winning’: Richard Spencer Rethinks His College Tour after Violent Protests,” the article is a report on the protests that prevented Spencer from speaking at Michigan State University. A group called “Stop Spencer…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article for Business Insider, Alan Dawson has provided a ranking of the 30 stadiums with the largest crowd capacity. If there were any doubt that major college football is primarily a big business and is skewed to the biggest programs in the five largest conferences, this list should put it…