BY CAPRICE LAWLESS In its quest for top-down control and from a misplaced notion that our gritty, lonely and nearly despairing community college students will respond warmly to a more sterile environment, administration has removed almost all the bulletin boards on our campus. The college vice president has to approve anything that anyone might…
In an editorial titled “Don’t Pick a New Fight: After Repeal of Senate Bill 5, Ohio Doesn’t Need Another Labor Battle,” the editors of the Columbus Dispatch, a newspaper not known for its support of labor unions, have publicly discouraged the members of the Ohio House from passing HB 377, which would impose “right-to-work” restrictions…
I just learned this morning via a report on Inside Higher Ed that Erika Christakis, the associate master of one of Yale University’s residential colleges, has decided to stop teaching at the university, in part because of the continuing controversy over an email message she sent about Halloween costumes. Although some students have demanded her…
Today is the deadline to submit a proposal for the AAUP Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education! The conference focus this year is on racial, social, and labor justice in higher education. Presentation proposals on all topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience will also be considered. The conference will be held June 15-19,…
Last week Moody’s Investor Services issued its 2016 outlook for American colleges and universities. The takeaways were: stability and modest growth. Moody’ suggested that tuition revenue growth is expected to be between 2 and 3 percent for public and private universities, with a 3 percent increase in revenue overall. On the public side, state revenue…
In the mid-1970s, when I was young and even more ignorant of the ways of the world than I am today, I learned that it was becoming necessary to have completed an MFA to get a paid position in the arts world. This struck me as ridiculous, a sheepskin standing in for actual work created.…
This week’s “Sunday Show Wrap-Up” from The Hill (see below) seems particularly instructive. The one thing on which the GOP presidential candidates uniformly agree is that President Obama is an ineffectual leader (or, worse–because Donald Trump is now suggesting, something much more sinister). Moreover, other than Trump himself, of course, all of them agree that…
When Honored Leaders Held and Even Promoted Some of the Least Honorable Attitudes of Their Times The Atlantic has published a series of articles and facilitated several forums addressing the controversy, centered at Princeton University, over President Woodrow Wilson’s attitudes toward race. In “The Racist Legacy of Woodrow Wilson,” Dick Lehr provides an account…
I was out-of-town and received a quotidian copy of the Wall Street Journal at my hotel. I was not surprised to see the usual neo-con op-eds of war criminals Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz who played key roles in President George Walker Bush’s terrorism against the nation of Iraq in 2003. I was not surprised to see denials…