An Eye-Opening Fact That Seems More than Illustrative, Even Metaphoric

This brief item appears at Phys.org: “American household Christmas lights, a favorite holiday tradition, use up more electricity than some poorer countries—such as El Salvador or Ethiopia—do in a year. “Bright lights strung on American trees, rooftops and lawns account for 6.63 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption every year, according to a recent blog post by the Center…

Placing the New Student Activism in Historical Context

Writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [31 Dec. 2015: A,1], Nedra Rhone reports on the rise in organized student activism nationwide but especially in greater Atlanta. In the article “Today’s Student Activists: On Fire against a Gumbo of Issues,” she emphasizes that this new wave of student activism is targeting more than racism, addressing issues “from…

The 1915 Declaration, a Century Later

Yesterday, Joerg Tiede posted an excerpt from his new book about the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles. Tiede noted that although the Declaration was presented on December 31, 1915, the AAUP members did not vote to approve it until January 1, 1916. So on this, the centennial of the of the slightly misdated Declaration, it’s…

Literally, a Singular Illustration of the Corporate Media’s Disregard, if Not Disdain, for American Labor

The following item was written by Peter Dreier for the blog Talking Union: “Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, has fired columnist Harold Meyerson, one of the nation’s finest journalists and perhaps the only self-proclaimed socialist to write a weekly column for a major American newspaper during the past decade or two. “At…

Magical Thinking on Education

Want good schools? Then train teachers well, pay them a competitive wage and give them the resources they need. It’s that simple. Really. Yet, for the past decade-and-a-half, we’ve been trying anything, anything at all, to prove this wrong. Though educational policy disaster has followed upon educational policy disaster, our leaders and our journalists continue…

On the Anniversary of the 1915 Declaration of Principles

The AAUP was founded on January 1 and 2, 1915. Shortly after the founding meeting, the Association’s first president, Columbia University philosophy professor John Dewey, appointed a Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, referred to as “the committee of fifteen.” The committee took up investigations of violations of academic freedom at the universities of Utah,…