BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Inside Higher Education just released the 2016 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers, conducted by Gallup and answered by 539 chief academic officers and provosts. In several categories, the results are telling. In a nutshell, almost all respondents stressed the continuing importance of the liberal arts. Interestingly, most recognized…
BY HENRY REICHMAN During his 50+ years on the AAUP staff Jordan E. Kurland, who died on Saturday at the age of 87, must have helped thousands of faculty members resist challenges to their academic freedom. Yet because he never sought the spotlight for himself, Jordan and his remarkable work remained largely unknown to most…
BY AARON BARLOW The reasoning behind the choice of “Media and the Faculty” as the theme of the current issue of Academe can be gleaned from David Daley’s interview on Salon with Jane Mayer about her new book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Concerning Lewis Powell who, before being…
This unsigned opinion piece was published through the Institute for America’s Future of the Campaign for America’s Future [http://ourfuture.org/], which has become a driving force behind the New Populist Movement. The group’s report, Organizing to Take Back America: The New Populist Movement, is available at: http://y.ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/New-Populist-Movement-Organizing.pdf. Prepared by Roger Hickey, the co-director of the Campaign for America’s…
In a post to Quartz India, Vivekananda Nemana has reported on the suicide by hanging of Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula, a doctoral student at the University of Hyderabad, which is also known as the Hyderabad Central University. Namana reports: “College students are up in arms across major Indian cities. Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune have witnessed…
There has been a great deal of interest in the Open Syllabus Project, including an article in The New York Times. I thought I’d take a look at it and see what tentative conclusions I could draw (a la Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading) about what is being taught in my field of English in the United States.…
When I cornered Richard Leakey to ask him about the elephant that had once chased me but had let me go, he responded, “The elephant wasn’t interested in you.” Though clearly anxious to get away after his talk at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, he had heard out my tale of how it…
BY KELLY HAND Two articles in the new January-February 2016 issue of Academe urge faculty to consider their ethical obligations within and beyond their academic communities. In her article, “Liberal Arts in the Modern University,” Lorna Fitzsimmons discusses the liberal arts as an antidote for social change and fragmentation. Offering the example of identity theft…
Writing for the website of Channel 10 News in the Tampa Bay-Sarasota metro area, Sarah Hollenbeck has reported on two bills currently being considered in the Florida state legislature that would legalize guns on the campuses of the state’s colleges and universities. Here are the highlights of the article: “Some college leaders estimate the cost…
In his state-of-the-state address, Gov. Rick Snyder referenced a timeline of the Flint water crisis prepared by his office. Here is that timeline: The progressive blog The Daily Kos has provided the following list of significant dates missing from Gov. Snyder’s timeline: April 2011: Reports of partially treated sewage leaking into the Flint River. This is one…