POSTED BY MARTIN KICH These are the lead paragraphs from an article written by Susan Snyder for the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Tweets by the chairman of Ursinus College’s board of trustees have drawn ire from some students and at least one fellow board member, who called them ‘elitist, racist, sexist, body-shaming,’ and ‘generally intolerant,’ and resigned…
By AARON BARLOW Some years ago, the chair of a department, after a college-wide committee had denied promotion to a couple of his faculty, was asked by the chair of that committee (an old friend) how he felt about it. “I guess I’m OK with it,” he joked, “but I suspect there are people in…
BY MARTIN KICH This is how the official Trump campaign site marked Labor Day: Trump did, however, tweet about his meeting with union leaders at an American Legion Post in Youngstown–after he bragged about some very selectively highlighted poll numbers: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Heading to Youngstown, Ohio now-some great polls. #AmericaFirst Donald J.…
BY DEBORAH MUTNICK Day 3 of the LIU lockout. Labor Day. I have been locked out of Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus by an administration that makes my colleagues and me feel like poster children for the neoliberal corporatization of higher education. We have lost our health care and other benefits, our pay, and our…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This post originally appeared on the blog Talking Union [https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/]. Paul Garver, the editor of that blog, on which some of my labor-related posts to this blog have been re-posted, has asked that I disseminate it as widely as possible. As the note at the bottom makes clear, it had already…
By AARON BARLOW A few minutes ago, I submitted the index for my next book to my publisher. The task, one I have performed for all of my books that have indexes, is a pain in the neck. Just when you think you are done with everything and can turn to new projects, you have to buckle…
BY PETER N. KIRSTEIN Melissa Click, who called for “some muscle” to thwart student academic freedom to film an on-campus anti-racism protest at the University of Missouri, is now on the faculty of Gonzaga University. According to the Chicago Tribune, Professor Click has a one-year appointment in the undergraduate communication studies department. She is listed on their website at the Roman…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Members of “Academics for Peace” and Education and Science Workers Union (Eğitim-SEN) have been removed from their positions in public higher education institutions permanently! In January 2016, 2,218 scholars from Turkey signed a petition titled “We will not be a party to this crime,” also known as the Peace Petition. Since…
BY HANK REICHMAN The latest work by celebrated gonzo journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech, is a book-length essay that tries to pillory the academic study of language, targeting along the way for special vitriol none other than Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky. I have zero expertise in this field and have…
BY HANK REICHMAN The horrific Labor Day lockout at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus has emerged, for the moment, as a front-line battleground in the fight for the future of higher education. If you haven’t yet joined the letters campaign in support of the LIU faculty initiated by the American Federation of Teachers, please do…