BY AARON BARLOW The other day, in a post on student agency, I complained again about the erzatz meritocracy of our star system of education. I tend to focus my attention in this area more on the classroom itself, where the best students get the most attention and support, though I do mention that the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN On June 14 the AAUP and the Newseum co-hosted a symposium on current challenges to free expression on college campuses, the First Amendment’s role and the future of the student press at American universities. The program consisted of two panels, one on free speech and the second on the student press. …
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL As enrollment continues to soften at four-year residential colleges, college administrators must increasingly justify the philosophies behind and the costs associated with them. It’s a sad commentary when colleges must defend what was once perceived to be the best justification for students to attend them. The older argument fell along these…
BY HANK REICHMAN Although Americans overall believe by a 55-36 percent margin that colleges and universities have a positive rather than a negative effect on “the way things are going in this country,” self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45%…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I reported on the layoff of five tenured professors at Mills College in Oakland, California. Although Mills’ action has failed to receive coverage in either the higher education press or the local media, as of this writing my post has been viewed more than 36,000 times. Yet Mills may not…
BY AARON BARLOW In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN This week the AAUP’s Committee on Graduate and Professional Students issued a statement condemning the current campaign by private elite universities “to obstruct the democratic rights and freedoms of their graduate employees” who seek union recognition. The University of Chicago is one such institution. There the administration continues to obstruct the…
BY THE AAUP COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDENTS Over the past nine months, graduate employees at private universities have faced vicious campaigns and legal challenges from university administrations as they have attempted to exercise their freedom to join together in a union to negotiate collectively for better working conditions. The American Association of University…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following item appeared in CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter for Monday, July 3, 2017: Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Fox & Friends” and was asked about the tweet Trump posted depicting himself metaphorically body slamming CNN. She retreated to a familiar White House talking point: the media is too focused on Trump’s tweets, not…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the fifth section of the most recent higher education report produced by the Ohio Conference of AAUP. John McNay, the President of the Conference, and Sara Kilpatrick, the Executive Director of the Conference, deserves kudos for doing the bulk of the work on this report. The report…