November 12, 2015 The horrific shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and subsequent incidents of gun violence elsewhere have prompted renewed efforts to keep our colleges and universities both safe and open. One measure increasingly proposed is legislation—already approved in eight states—that would allow any licensed gun owner to carry concealed weapons on campus.…
Barbara J. Wilson became interim chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, when Phyllis Wise resigned under pressure in the wake of revelations of a private e-mail account to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. She continues to also serve as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In the wake of the…
The Daily Illini, the student paper at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been a very reliable source on the tenure travesty of Dr Steven Salaita. They report that Dr Salaita will receive directly a settlement of $600,000, with another $275,000 going to his attorneys. There is, of course, no job restoration, and the University of Illinois is…
Here is the press release from Salaita’s lawyers: Settlement Reached in Case of Professor Fired for “Uncivil” Tweets November 12, 2015, Chicago – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel Loevy & Loevy announced the settlement of Professor Steven Salaita’s case against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for firing him from…
The growing trend toward secret presidential searches and the emerging tendency of governing boards to appoint corporate executives or politicians with no experience in higher education has gained considerable attention on this blog (see for examples the University of Iowa and the University of Missouri, the latter with well-known disastrous consequences). One recent example is…
Bruce Joshua Miller and Ned Stuckey-French have written a splendid piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education that provides further perspective on the recent events at the University of Missouri, most specifically their connection with broader disturbing trends in higher education. The entire piece deserves a reading, but here are some pertinent excerpts: Timothy Wolfe…
“For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.” That was Sen. Marco Rubio at last night’s Republican presidential debate. Let’s ignore that Rubio apparently doesn’t know when to use “less” and when to use “fewer.” (I’m…
Anyone who thought that minority student complaints about racism at the University of Missouri, which led to the resignations on Monday of system President Timothy Wolfe and Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, were exaggerated should check out this account of developments over the past two days from the campus newspaper, The Maneater. “Many students…
Yesterday’s stunning events at the University of Missouri must be viewed in the context of a much broader movement, led by minority students, to confront persistent racism at many college and university campuses. Even as the movement at Missouri was gathering steam, a similar conflict was brewing at one of the nation’s oldest and most…
I’ve been watching with dismay the coverage of the incident yesterday where University of Missouri professor Melissa Click asked, “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.” To me, she seems to have moved from supporting the student protesters (which I applaud) who had created a tent…