A colleague of mine went on a public tirade this fall against the use of numbers of citations in decisions on tenure and promotion. Hers may have been an intentionally self-serving rant, but she has a point. The amount of attention a paper or book brings—or even its usefulness to other scholars—has little to do…
This week I had the honor and privilege to join more than 30 California community college faculty, students, staff, trustees and community allies attending a meeting of the National Advisory Commission for Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) in Alexandria, Virginia. NACIQI advises the U.S. Department of Education with regard to federal recognition of accrediting agencies…
Use of a proprietary database that purports to show the publications, citations, books and grants awarded to a professor provides far too limited a perspective on faculty achievement and creates the potential for career-ending errors, according to David M. Hughes, professor of anthropology and president of the faculty union AAUP-AFT at Rutgers. The same data…
Chicago Tribune sportswriter Shannon Ryan has an important column today attacking the efforts of Missouri legislators to punish activist student athletes who boycott games (and fine coaches who support them): “This is another attempt to control athletes, silence them and pigeonhole them as solely money-makers for the university.” Even if I don’t think football players should…
On December 10, the Academic Senate at California State University, Chico adopted a Resolution of No Confidence in university President Paul Zingg, Interim Provost Susan Elrod, and Vice President for Business and Finance Lorraine (Lori) Hoffman. After nearly three and a half hours of statements, comments from faculty, staff, and students, and discourse among the…
The open access movement in scholarly publishing has been widely and rightly praised, but its potentially negative implications for academic freedom are too often ignored. Today an opinion piece on Inside Higher Ed by Rick Anderson, associate dean for collections and scholarly communication at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, makes an important…
Last week the AAUP issued a blistering report criticizing the Iowa Board of Regents for its conduct of a presidential search that led to the hiring of businessman J. Bruce Harreld as President of the University of Iowa. The report acknowledged, however, that Harreld had pledged to respect shared governance and faculty rights and had…
The following is a press release from the Professional Staff Congress representing faculty at the City University of New York: New York—Senator Bernie Sanders, presidential candidate and Brooklyn native, is calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to invest in the City University of New York and fund a fair union contract for CUNY faculty and staff.…
I don’t usually post items that are not about higher ed on this blog, but I felt a powerful need to share the story below, which I chanced upon earlier today. I was 21 years old during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, fresh from a spring of protest and rebellion at Columbia University. The famous…
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, the union announced today. If that happens it would be the union’s second walkout in four years. “Chicago Teachers Union members do not want to strike, but we do demand that you listen to us,” Jesse Sharkey, the vice president of the union,…