BY NOAH ZATZ The following is reposted with permission from The Faculty Lounge. Noah Zatz is professor of law at the UCLA School of Law. The post is edited lightly from a letter to the UCLA administrative and faculty leadership, and posted on his Facebook page. I am of the firm and strong view that…
BY HENNING SCHROEDER In recent COVID-19 updates, the president’s office at the University of Minnesota announced that graduation ceremonies planned for May 2020 will need to be canceled, postponed, or “socially distant.” This is truly sad news for our students, their friends, their relatives, and the entire university community. Similar decisions are being made at…
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS The coronavirus pandemic has hit. The nation and the economy are in a free fall. Your college has closed and your college administration is announcing how there is nothing to see over here because the faculty—those miraculous, mythical, shapeshifting creatures—have morphed overnight from classroom teachers to “online educators” engaged in “online learning”…
BY AARON BARLOW Listen to our students. That’s the best way for us teachers to craft a successful end to a disrupted semester in a nation in crisis. After Kent State in 1970, we students at Utica College (like our contemporaries all over the country) shut our campus down. Under the leadership of faculty, however,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Confined to home by the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I last night were looking for entertainment and stumbled upon a 1921 silent film classic, The Blot, on Turner Classic Movies. Almost totally by chance we watched a few moments of TCM’s intro and soon were hooked. The Blot was directed by…
BY AARON BARLOW The emails can be overwhelming. Hundreds of them from well-meaning colleagues, campus IT departments, our chairs, deans, provosts… everyone who can is chipping in to help us make hurried conversions to online instruction. In a way, it’s wonderful to see this response (though a little frustrating: many of us were advocating planning…
BY AARON BARLOW When I was in Peace Corps in West Africa, I could always tell where the butcher’s stand was by the vultures circling overhead. Today, I am seeing similar carrion feeders, ones hoping to snatch up the offal from the COVID-19 situation… The COVID-19 college closures are being seized upon by the EdTech…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following call to action is being distributed by an ad hoc national faculty group, Ad Hoc Committee of Scholars 4 COLA. The Ad Hoc Committee of Scholars 4 COLA Presents: WEEK OF ACTION FOR UC STRIKERS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION EVERYWHERE! March 9-13, 2020 SUPPORT THE STRIKERS, FROM UC TO UCU!…
BY MICHAEL MERANZE The following is reposted from the Remaking the University blog. Michael Meranze is Professor of History at UCLA and a member of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The labor action that began with the grade strike in Santa Cruz and has now spread throughout the [U]niversity [of California] has…