POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In a September post to this blog [https://academeblog.org/2016/09/05/saving-the-labor-center-at-umass-amherst/], I reported on the efforts to keep the UMass Labor Center from being closed. Earlier this month, the Amherst Bulletin included a story by Jack Suntrup titled “UMass Labor Center Saved from Shutdown and New Scholarships to Center Available”: “After months of upheaval…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH If the World Were 100 People: Gender 50 would be female 50 would be male Age 26 would be 0-14 66 would be 15-64 8 would be 65 and older Geography 60 would be from Asia 15 would be from Africa 11 would be from Europe 9 would be from Latin…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH During the 2016 election, the Carrier factory’s decision to move jobs from Indiana to Mexico was a story that stuck. Donald Trump won a political victory when he convinced the CEO of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, to keep 800 jobs in Indiana. Trump’s efforts run counter to a broader global…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article for Reason, Jacob Sullum reports: “Last week a federal appeals court ruled that requiring incoming students at a state college to surrender their urine for drug testing violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. . . . “Linn State Technical College, now known as the State Technical…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following data is from the Student Loan Report produced by 24/7 Wall St. This news release provides a summary explanation of that report, highlighting the key findings and aspects of the methodology: “Total student debt in the United States, at approximately $1.26 trillion, is the second largest consumer debt in…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Leonard, Elmore. Get Shorty. New York: Delacorte, 1990. Almost single-handedly, Elmore Leonard brought the genre of crime fiction to renewed prominence. Although the sub-genre stretches back to James M. Cain and was enriched by Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson, it was eclipsed by the proliferation in the categories of mystery detective…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is a photo of parents of university students sleeping on mats in a gymnasium during a “parents’ weekend” at a university in Wuhan, China.
BY MARTIN KICH Business Insider has aggregated the NFL draft projections of five “experts”: Todd McShay, Mel Kiper, Jr., Rob Rang, Matt Miller, and Steve Palazzolo. What is of interest to me is less who the particular players are than which programs they are playing for. Before listing the individual players, I have aggregated the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Mexico In January 2015, the Universidad Valle de Mexico campus in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo was “closed for more than a week due to threats and attempted extortion by gangsters”: “The campus closed in response to a threat received from a criminal gang that wanted to enter the…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week’s controversy over Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s tweet about “white genocide” has once again raised the perpetually thorny issue of academic freedom’s claim to protect the “extramural utterances” of faculty members who speak as private citizens. As of this writing it appears that Drexel administrators have disavowed any intent to…