BY AARON BARLOW In a column for Inside Higher Ed this week, Philip Nel of Kansas State University creates a list of the reasons so many academics work so much. It’s an essay worth reading, not only because it flies in the face of the myth that professors lead lives of ease but because of…
BY MARTIN KICH The editors of and contributors to the books section of the Independent, one of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers, have published a list of “43 Books to Read before You Die” in honor of World Book Day, which in case you missed it was yesterday. The list includes the following titles, with annotations…
BY MARTIN KICH The first is not so much a parody as a political re-adaptation of The Producers featuring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OemqVWi_R0k&sns=em The second is the new film by Sacha Baron Cohen, The Brothers Grimsby. Here is a thoughtful commentary by Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim on the film’s strange pre-release buzz: “Audiences…
A Report on the Graduate Worker Day of Action, 15th October, 2015 by Abhishek Bhattacharyya (University of Chicago), Anthony Levenda (Portland State University), and Matthew Canfield (New York University) In the September-October 2015 issue of Academe, Prof. David Schultz wrote about the fertile conditions for faculty unionization, and the “The Rise and the Coming Demise…
BY JOHN HINSHAW To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy colleges are alike; all unhappy universities are unhappy in their own way. This is the story of an unhappy place: Marywood University. There, the faculty, with help from their colleagues throughout the state and region, are fighting against despair to make the institution true to AAUP principles…
BY HANK REICHMAN Support continues to build for the California Faculty Association (CFA)’s “Fight for Five.” The union, an AAUP affiliate representing 26,000 faculty, librarians, counselors and coaches in the 23-campus California State University system, has vowed to walk out for five days in mid-April if agreement is not reached on a salary settlement. CFA…
It is a rare event when the often fractious, overly politically correct, and typically apathetic left is forced to get past their myopia and carefully constructed boundaries. It is therefore with deep thanks and gratitude in which I welcome the Donald Trump campaign. I mean think about it -when was the last time that a…
The Akron-AAUP has announced that a strike authorization vote will take place March 7-11. AKRON, Ohio – March 3, 2016 – The American Association of University Professors, University of Akron Chapter (Akron-AAUP) has announced to faculty that a strike authorization vote of the union membership will take place from March 7 – March 11, 2016. This announcement comes after…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday word came that Simon Newman, the notorious president of Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, had resigned. Newman, readers will recall, was the fool who spoke of drowning at-risk freshmen like “bunnies” and who summarily dismissed (and subsequently reinstated) two long-time faculty members for “disloyalty.” (For background go here, here, and…
BY HANK REICHMAN Over the past several months this blog has posted a number of items about the growing and dangerous trend of conducting searches for top administrators in secret, with no public disclosure of candidates. The disastrous consequences of such searches have already been witnessed at the Universities of Missouri and Iowa and have…