BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted from Remaking the University, where it appeared as the third in a series, Our Converging Crises. For the first two installments in the series go here and here. Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, co-editor of Remaking the University, and…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH AAUP-OSU Statement on the COVID-19 Crisis: What Does OSU Value and How Should It Respond? COVID-19 has led to unprecedented challenges to the work and wellbeing of those at The Ohio State University, and these pressures will continue to be felt in the months and years ahead. In their communications over…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Department of Education just distributed this press release. It appears to be a formal announcement of the monies that we have all been discussing for several weeks. It seems to suggest that those monies are just now being released–now that the initial $6.2 billion in direct aid to students has…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE Solving social problems democratically requires well-informed citizens who can reason together despite differences in outlook. It requires, in short, rational public discourse. Making this happen has never been easy, and today it seems to be getting harder. Architects of the new Program for Public Discourse at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill…
BY TAMMIE CUMMING, M. DAVID MILLER, FREDRIK DEBOER, AND JENNIFER BERGERON It seems that almost no aspect of academic life has been untouched by the coronavirus pandemic and the drastic measures governments and institutions have taken to respond to it. Nearly every postsecondary institution has adopted distance learning, forcing many faculty and students to adapt…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Liberty University has a long history of repression, including suppressing freedom of the press on campus by censoring its student newspaper. But Liberty reached a new low for liberty last week when president Jerry Falwell Jr. announced that the university has issued arrest warrants against two reporters for the crime of…
BY DAVID KOCIEMBA AAUP clinical faculty are on the front lines of caring for COVID-19 patients. You can help them stay safe while doing so. Members at the AAUP chapters at the University of Connecticut Health Center and at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut (UConn) have formed a joint group of doctors,…
BY JUAN COLE Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and editor-in-chief of the Informed Comment blog, from which this is reposted with permission. The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In all sorts of ways and on all sorts of levels, the coronavirus crisis is making the case for the value of a liberal arts education and of general-education courses. As a professor of English, I could make the case for the value of communication skills and, in particular, of writing…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH If one showed most Americans this photo, they would have no idea who the woman was: If one added this next photo, a few might guess that she was Eleanor Roosevelt, standing in the background as her husband signed another piece of landmark New Deal legislation: But, much like Eleanor Roosevelt,…