CNN has reported the following comments made by Donald Trump about the journalists who have been covering his campaign: “Even Donald Trump has limits. “The Republican front-runner–who frequently lambasts the media as ‘scum’ or ‘horrible’–reassured reporters at rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Monday that he had no desire to execute the press who cover…
What is occurring in Maine is the opposite of what has occurred in places where the “charter” university concept has taken hold–most notably Virginia. In those places, elite public universities have accepted lower state subsidies for more institutional “flexibility”–which has meant more aggressive efforts to attract out-of-state and international students who pay higher tuition.…
AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum just called my attention to what he called “the best opinion piece I have read in the Chronicle [of Higher Education] in years.” Written by Douglas Anderson, professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University, “Clear the Way for More Good Teachers” is indeed essential reading. But the modest but brilliant proposal…
Even if your college or university has suffered from excessive administrative in-fighting, I doubt that it has come anywhere close to match the following situation, reported in the Bangkok Post in Thailand: “Assumption University is once again engulfed in chaos due to factional infighting over who has the right to be the university’s rector.…
Each year the University of Cincinnati chapter holds a Solidarity Lunch to which it invites not only its own members but also the members of all of the other unions that represent university employees. At my own university, only the maintenance workers are also unionized, but I think that this sort of “solidarity” event is…
Wheaton College officials are moving to fire tenured professor Larycia Hawkins because she made comments deemed too pro-Muslim by the administration. Hawkins’ trouble began when she announced that she would be wearing a hijab in solidarity with Muslims in the wake of Donald Trump’s call for banning Muslim immigrants. She declared, “I love my Muslim…
Two quotes from self-proclaimed education “reformers”: Margaret Spellings (former Bush administration Secretary of Education, and president-elect of the University of North Carolina) explaining her work with for-profit colleges: “The reason I did it was because I learned a lot about how we can serve our students and think of them as customers in providing a…
The University of Maine recently announced that it would start charging qualified students from Massachusetts the same tuition and fees that they would pay to attend the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus at Amherst. For nonresidents, this represents a savings of about $15,000 off the comprehensive fee’s sticker price for Massachusetts residents. The offer also…
Among the most controversial and widely publicized controversies during the recent autumn of student unrest was that surrounding the incident at Yale University, where a residence hall adviser’s email about Halloween costumes prompted a national debate over the allegedly competing values of free speech and racial justice. I previously commented at some length on the…