Diverse Faculty? Maybe "We Don't Want Them"

BY HANK REICHMAN “Why aren’t college faculties more racially diverse?”  That’s the important question addressed in a recent column published in the Hechinger report and the Washington Post by Marybeth Gasman, professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Center for Minority Serving…

Why We Protest and the Meaning of AAUP Censure

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN In June the AAUP’s annual membership meeting voted unanimously to place the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, on the association’s list of administrations censured for violations of academic freedom.  The censure concerns the action taken on December 11, 2015, by the administration of the college to eliminate twenty-seven…

Harvard Faculty Members Support Strikers

BY HANK REICHMAN In an update to my previous post on the continuing strike of food service workers at Harvard University, I called attention to a walkout by hundreds of Harvard students on Monday in support of the strikers.  As the students and workers rallied, Kennedy School of Government lecturer Timothy P. McCarthy, a Harvard…

Support APSCUF Strike!

BY HANK REICHMAN Faculty members at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities went on strike today after bargaining to prevent the first classroom walkout in the system’s 34 years collapsed. The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) announced shortly after 5 a.m. that a strike could not be averted after five consecutive days of…

Charting the Collapse of For-Profit Higher Ed

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In an article for Education Dive, Jarrett Carter presents the following three charts from other sources that indicate the collapse of for-profit higher education:     Carter’s complete article is available at: http://www.educationdive.com/news/these-3-charts-show-the-collapse-of-for-profit-education/427480/.  

How to Invite Satire That Hurts

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This is from Brian Stetler’s Reliable Sources daily newsletter from CNN for Sunday, October 16: “Trump Turns on SNL “Sunday’s funniest (?) story is about SNL and specifically about Trump’s reaction to the show. On Sunday morning, after watching the skits, he tweeted, ‘Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire…

Reich: "Public Higher Education is Dying in the U.S."

BY HANK REICHMAN Public higher education is “dying” in the US, with the pricing out of students from poorer backgrounds amounting to a “national tragedy in the making.”  So warned Robert Reich, chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and secretary of labor in the Bill Clinton administration, in a…

"Campus Carry" and Academic Freedom: The Emerging Reality

BY HANK REICHMAN In 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 11, also known as the “campus carry” law, at a shooting range. The law permits the concealed carry of guns in dorms, classrooms, and buildings at state universities and community colleges, while leaving individual schools some latitude to keep parts of their properties firearm-free, extending…

The Remove to Representation

BY AARON BARLOW Sometime around 1970, when I told an aunt and uncle that the FBI was spying on American leftists, they turned to me in outrage and spoke in unison, “You don’t really believe that, do you?” This, from a couple who had just told me I should be willing to go fight in…

Science in the Crosshairs

BY HANK REICHMAN Readers of this blog may be familiar with the regular National Public Radio (NPR) feature “Science Friday.”  Last week one 35-minute segment, “Science in the Crosshairs,” focused on governmental and other threats to the academic freedom of scientists.  It began with fetal tissue research: After furor erupted over a video seeming to…