BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL There is plenty of data suggesting that education, particularly a college or university degree, leads to higher incomes. Less is known about the impact of higher education — and specific schools — on socioeconomic mobility, that is, moving from one “rung” of the income ladder to another. A new study by…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was issued by the AAUP earlier today, February 1, 2017. The 2016 election has exacerbated a political climate that was already inimical to academic freedom. Six years ago the American Association of University Professors conveyed its concern that “the war on terror, the conflict in the Middle East,…
BY HANK REICHMAN The following is the text of a talk I delivered on January 30 at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I want to thank the Whitman AAUP chapter, the faculty committee on academic freedom and due process, and the Whitman administration for their invitation, hospitality and support during my illuminating two-day visit.…
BY MARTIN KICH Any budget number can be made to sound exorbitant if doing so serves a political purpose. But the scope of our governmental budgets, as well as the scope of our economy, has long exceeded the ability of most of us to grasp the numbers—both viscerally and intellectually—in any meaningful way. Given the…
BY LAURA MARKWARDT Yesterday, Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary nominee, submitted written answers to questions from the Senate Education Committee. As in her hearing, she avoided substantially answering questions. Senator Patty Murray says that DeVos’s answers are lacking and has called for a postponement of today’s scheduled committee vote. Senator Al Franken confirmed last week…
BY LAURA MARKWARDT The AAUP issued the following statement today calling for the reversal of the Muslim ban executive order and praising widespread citizen resistance over the weekend. You can add your name in solidarity against the ban here. The AAUP strongly opposes Donald Trump’s unconstitutional and discriminatory ban on entry into the United States…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Here is the opening of an article written by Jack Torry for the Columbus Dispatch: Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown objected to the government’s decision to prevent a Cleveland Clinic physician on a Sudanese passport from returning to the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the NBC News website, Phil Hessel reports on the responses of universities to President Trump’s executive order prohibiting those from certain Muslim countries from entering the U.S.: “At a practical level, we are advising community members and visiting scholars from the designated countries to suspend plans for international travel,”…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH On January 18, the New York Times published a piece by Scott Shane titled “From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece.” The piece might have been given the title of this post or “Anatomy of a Piece of Complete Fiction”–with an ironic tip of the hat to the novelist Robert…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is a follow-up to my December 29 post, “Court Blocks Mandatory Drug Screening at State College.” Given the substantial reductions in state support very recently announced for the state colleges and universities in Missouri, the pursuit of this appeal does not seem an especially prudent allocation of institutional resources. The…