BY MARTIN KICH If you have not seen Tavis Smiley’s interview with the linguist George Lakoff, it is very much worth watching. Lakoff offers much insight into how progressives need to frame issues in order to reach the broadest possible spectrum of voters: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365951602/. Here are the opening paragraphs of Lakoff’s blog post “Understanding Trump,”…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY Guest blogger Dr. Matthew Boedy is in his second year as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at the University of North Georgia in Gainesville, Ga. He is a member of the AAUP. When I stood in front of my students on the first day of the semester…
BY AARON BARLOW In an opinion piece published by The New York Times, Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, writes: American colleges and universities, public and private, are properly seen as nonpartisan elements in civil society, committed to research and teaching in a manner that transcends ordinary politics. But to succeed, these institutions must ensure…
BY HANK REICHMAN Back in November, about three weeks after the election, I posted “A Playlist for the Trump Presidency.” It got a pretty good response, so now that we’re a bit more than two weeks into that presidency and the need for “solace, inspiration, and fortification” seems greater than ever, I thought I’d post…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The speech was provided by Elizabeth Warren’s office and published below an article written by David Marans for Huffington Post, highlighting her key points. I’m going to cut to the chase: We’re gathered today in Baltimore during a moment of crisis – for us as progressives, for us as Democrats, for…
BY DAVID CORTRIGHT, ASHER KAUFMAN, GEORGE LOPEZ, ANN MISCHE, ATALIA OMER, JASON SPRINGS, SUSAN ST. VILLE, AND ERNESTO VERDEJA The statement shared below was crafted by a group of faculty members at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies during the first week of the new administration, as we watched the foundational values of our…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH We are getting used to seeing this sort of thing in states in which, largely because of gerrymandering, the GOP control of state government is all out of proportion to their actual share of voters. But, what is significant about this story, reported in the Daily Kos Elections: Voting Rights Roundup…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These lists are from an article written by Abby Jackson for Business Insider: The first chart indicates those institutions with the most currently enrolled students who are citizens of the seven predominantly Muslim nations covered by Trump’s ban: The second chart ranks the institutions by the loss of direct revenue that…
BY AARON BARLOW Two great failings of the American professoriate are timidity and self-righteousness. Casting about to orient myself in my new calling a decade or so ago, I found David Horowitz defining one extreme view of it and Michael Bérubé standing out on the other. Horowitz was pushing professors further into timidity and inaction…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last week, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and Commonfund released their report on the endowment performance of the 805 colleges and universities who responded to their survey. The outlook was fairly dismal and sheds light on the precarious foundation on which American higher education’s financial model is…