BY HANK REICHMAN It’s that time of year again, as colleges and universities celebrate their graduates at commencement ceremonies, often by providing a celebrity speaker. And, of course, that means it’s also the time of year when complaints are raised about whether some speakers are appropriate (or, as some would have it, “politically correct”) and…
BY MARTIN KICH Ellroy, James. L.A. Confidential. New York: Mysterious, 1990. A strong case can be made that in the last quarter of the 20th century, James Ellroy has stylistically influenced the American mystery-detective novel more than any other novelist of the period. After writing seven other crimes novels in six years, Ellroy focused his…
A new report from PayScale [http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/job-skills] includes the results of a survey of personnel managers, who were asked to indicate what percentage of their companies’ recent hires lack certain skills.
Writing for the Cincinnati Inquirer, Kate Murphy reports that Northern Kentucky University will eliminate “more than 100 faculty and staff positions” to cover an $8 million budget shortfall. The announcement came on the heels of a ruling by Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate that “Gov. Matt Bevin can cut the budgets of public colleges and…
BY JOHN K. WILSON The AAUP today issued a report on the University of Missouri, condemning the Board’s decision to fire Melissa Click. The full report is well worth reading, and I have previously argued in defense of Click, but I want to make a personal response to the Mizzou Board of Curator’s 10-page letter that it…
Australia—Nikolic, Powell, and Price In March 2015, Michael Powell, a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, wrote an opinion piece published in the Launceston Examiner pointing out that the budget reductions being proposed by the Liberal government would have a devastating impact on higher education across Australia. The Liberal Whip happened to be Alexander…
Tenure is under fire both economically and politically—as the percentage of faculty who are tenured or on tenure tracks declines and as state governments undermine the legal standing of the concept, as they have in Wisconsin. So we all need to be better prepared to defend the concept, whether in professional or personal conversations or…
What follows is the text of a letter sent by Margaret Spellings, president of the University of North Carolina, to the Justice Department, making the case that the university–and, by extension all public colleges and universities in the state–have been placed in a very difficult situation by the Department of Justice’s suit on transgender rights and the…
Like others who post to this blog, I am generally not in favor of academic boycotts. But I don’t have the same reservations about economic boycotts. But, ultimately, my different attitudes toward the two types of boycotts may amount to a distinction without a real difference because I would not try to eliminate anyone else’s…
BY GALEN LEONHARDY Guest blogger Galen Leonhardy is an AAUP member living and teaching in Illinois. One light illuminated the office, a soft-white bulb within the yellowed burlap-upholstered confines atop a standing lamp. Five of us gathered in one place. To my left and behind me stood our vice president of instruction and acting president,…