When Polarization Becomes the Snake That Swallows Itself

  The following quotations appeared in different parts of CNN’s daily Politics newsletter:   “Politics: Trump used to back Hillary, who endorsed Gore, who ran with Lieberman, who endorsed McCain, who picked Palin, who endorsed Trump.” –Tweet by the New York Times‘ Nick Confessore, on the circle of American politics.   “It is hard for me to watch…

Government Run like a Business Led to Lead in Flint’s Water

This post was written by Dave Johnson for the daily Progressive Breakfast newsletter 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…

Notes for “Devil”

This is a guest post by Howard V. Hendrix, who teaches literature and writing at California State University–Fresno. He is the author of six novels and many short stories, poems, and essays. A year has now elapsed since the events that prompted me to write “Professor, Say Hi To The Devil!” To really understand this…

Why “Media and the Faculty”?

The theme for the current issue of Academe, “Media and the Faculty,” was selected to encourage us to get more involved in the public debates surrounding higher education. As I write in my “From the Editor” column: we have to become our own advocates. Joining the AAUP, of course, is a first step, but each of…

Overcoming Unconscious Bias on Campus

  Protests by and on behalf of students of color on campuses such as Yale University and the University of Missouri have highlighted the need for greater diversity among faculty. While some colleges and universities, including Yale, have committed millions of dollars to diversity initiatives, the obstacles to recruiting and retaining faculty from historically underrepresented…

Regarding the Artist

Years ago, before I even thought about teaching as a full-time and permanent career, I spent a few semesters working for an online “university.” I won’t call what I did “teaching.” After all, the institution didn’t. I was a “facilitator” responsible for a section or two of the required Composition course. It had been designed…

The Neologist’s Notebook: 1

Yesterday, in her speech endorsing the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin referred to our need to resist inserting ourselves military into all of the many “squirmishes” occurring around the world. Yesterday, on ESPN’s Around the Horn, Woody Paige referred to the controversy surrounding the fans’ election of a hockey enforcer as an all-star…

A Crisis in Civic Education?

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a conservative group that has advocated increased activism by college and university trustees and a “return” to “traditional” curricula in Western Civilization and American military, constitutional, and diplomatic history (let’s put aside for now that, given the recent behavior of most trustee boards, these two goals may…