BY HANK REICHMAN On June 26, the board of trustees of Mills College, meeting behind closed doors, approved a vaguely formulated “Financial Stabilization Plan” (FSP) previously rejected overwhelmingly by the institution’s faculty. The plan calls for reducing the number of departments from 18 to 13 and the number of schools from four to three. Two…
In a parody of TED Talks, the Canadian satire group This Is That makes fun of the growing Thought Leader industry. One of the lines of their speaker points to the reason for the ennui that TED Talks bring out in me: “I’ve Made You Believe There Is a Point.” This woke me to my previously…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Over the past two years, my university, Wright State, has been producing negative news stories with remarkable regularity. Our enrollment, which had been gradually increasing has dipped somewhat, and because we are in the midst of a largely self-created budget mess, any decline in enrollment makes the budget issues worse…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Here is an inspiring rendition of a Langston Hughes poem produced by MoveOn.org: And here is a more cautionary poem that is probably more at the level at which most of us celebrate the July 4th holiday: Independence Day, 1971 He forced half a watermelon like a tight…
I believe that this is the 5th time that I have had the honor of addressing this body in my capacity as President of the AAUP. Let me start by thanking our wonderful staff. Without their hard work and dedication to our cause, we would cease to exist. While I cannot name and thank…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Much has been written about “fake news,” about the political ramifications of charging that something is “fake news,” and about the broader undermining of the public confidence in the credibility of the news media. Moreover, in the seemingly endless discussion of certain news stories and with the proliferation of social…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following News Brief has been distributed by Education Dive: A professor at Youngstown State University has decided against teaching an optional summer class for students because the institution decided to cut his pay for the class by 43% after fewer students enrolled than the required 15, according to WKBN…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Under the heading “Trump’s Fraud Commission Has Big Problems,” Vox has offered the following summaries of those problems, with links to articles providing more detail: During and after the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump released a relentless stream of allegations of widespread voter fraud across the country, with no evidence to…
BY HANK REICHMAN Right-wing media organizations and some conservative faculty members often have been quick to condemn student protesters and allegedly “leftist” faculty members for their efforts to disrupt or silence conservative speakers as well as for their sometimes silly demands for so-called “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” Much of this criticism is well-merited; even…
BY HANK REICHMAN A fifth of the Los Angeles Community College District’s 230,000 students are homeless, and nearly two-thirds can’t afford to eat properly, according to a new survey commissioned by the system’s board of trustees and reported yesterday in the Los Angeles Times: Nearly half the L.A. community college students surveyed reported struggling with…