Photo: Stephen Kuusisto walking in academic convocation at Syracuse University with his guide dog Nira By Stephen Kuusisto I’m borrowing my title from Liza Featherstone’s new advice column in The Nation which is entitled: “Asking for a Friend: Is It Me or is it Capitalism?” Oh the sang froid of self help! One scarcely knows…
I was a labor historian earlier in my career. Sadly, I hardly ever get to teach that subject anymore because the class never fills. However, the lessons that most of the best labor historians I read during graduate school described in their work have never left me. Indeed, they seem more relevant to my own…
The following is the text of a statement issued on November 5 by the AAUP: On July 20, the AAUP and AFT‐Wisconsin released a joint statement condemning the attacks on tenure and shared governance in higher education that the Wisconsin Legislature included in its annual budget and in Act 55, which Governor Scott Walker signed…
By Stephen Kuusisto “Well what do you want?” asks the ableist. “We have to weigh your request for assistance against all the other non-disabled people’s requests.” The ableist is in her forties, young enough to know better, was educated at a university, must have come into contact with feminism. Surely knows about equality. That’s…
The following essay by Christopher Newfield, Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is reposted with permission from Chris’s and Michael Meranze’s Remaking the University blog. We’re many years now into the New Normal for public universities. We’ve known for a while that this means permanent budgetary austerity.…
Last night on The Nightly Show, Larry Wilmore reported on Ohio’s rejection of a ballot issue that would have legalized marijuana. Focusing on Ohio’s electoral importance as a presidential swing state, Wilmore described Ohio as “America’s designated driver” and suggested that, instead of indulging with weed, Ohioans prefer to engage in the state’s favorite recreational…
Here is the e-mail from the Chief of the Campus Police at Adams State University to the campus community: From: Adams State University Police Department <pgrohowski@adams.edu> Date: Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 8:05 AM Subject: Message from Chief Grohowski Open letter to campus staff, students and faculty, I want to take this opportunity to bring…
On the same day that the California Faculty Association (CFA) announced that 94% of its voting membership had voted to authorize strike actions, faculty and staff represented by another AAUP-affiliate, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of New York (CUNY), demonstrated yesterday evening outside the CUNY offices in Manhattan. PSC members have…
Marilynne Robinson is best known for her award-winning fiction. All four of her novels have won major literary awards. Her second novel, Gilead, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. The New York Review of Books recently published a two-part “conversation” between Robinson and President Barack Obama, a big fan of her work. In the 2015…
The results are in: Over 94% of California Faculty Association (CFA) members who voted in balloting on whether to authorize strike actions said ‘Yes’ to authorize the CFA Board of Directors to call a strike. CFA represents some 26,000 faculty members in the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system and is an affiliate organization of…