Steven Salaita spoke tonight at the University of Illinois at Chicago before a supportive crowd of 150 about his new book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom, which Aaron Barlow reviewed and I also reviewed last week. Salaita will be speaking on Oct. 13 in Urbana. He wondered about the controversy that got him fired, “Why was it…
In The New York Times today is an article, “For-Profit Colleges Accused of Fraud Still Receive U.S. Funds.” Exploitation of the failed student loan programs (failed, that is, in terms of protection against fraud by for-profits) continues, the Times says, even in the face of an Education Department crackdown on “bad actors.” The article claims:…
Over the past decade, any number of commentators have noted the striking differences between our national discussions of and our national responses to terrorist attacks and domestic gun violence. In fact, that contrast has now been referenced so frequently that it has become something of a truism. But, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles…
By Robin Meade I won! On September 17, the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board (IELRB) made its final ruling in my case against Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC). It all started in August of 2013, when I was fired by the administration at Moraine Valley Community College for writing a letter to the League of Innovation in…
Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared here. Supporting evidence for Part I Corporate Control of Higher Ed A Deeper Examination of the Messaging In Part One I mentioned two articles: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html . The first one is published by Fordham Institiute (known for a its corporate-model reforms) promoting ““Deans…
Guest Blogger Morna McDermott teaches in the College of Education, Towson University. This post originally appeared here. Let’s Start with a Few Recent Headlines: Teacher Prep Colleges Are Failing the Teachers Study Delivers Failing Grades For Many Programs Training Teachers States Slow to Close Faltering Teacher Ed. Programs (also see more recently: http://edexcellence.net/articles/reforming-ed-schools-from-within and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/teacher-prep-programs-need-to-be-accountable-too/2015/02/20/ed140f44-b8fc-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html ) Traditional colleges of…
Guest blogger Jacob A. Bennett lives and works in Philadelphia, where he teaches rhetoric, poetry, and literature. I was surprised to receive, and happy to accept, an invitation to attend this year’s annual meeting of the Pennsylvania State Conference of the AAUP on October 3. The keynote speaker, Dr. Gerald Beyer of Villanova University (the host…
The American professoriate once ranged from professionals who taught a course as an adjunct—a contribution to their professions, the compensation being almost nothing—to the regular (but generally poorly paid, often relying on family fortune to sustain them) faculty who generally assumed lifetime security at institutions whose operation their colleagues dominated. That changed over the decades starting…
Cecil Canton, my colleague on the CBC Executive Committee, has passed along this “Weekly Commentary” from Jesse Jackson, Sr., about the erosion of voting rights in Alabama. Very ironically but very predictably, once the Supreme Court ruled that the states subject to federal monitoring under the Voting Rights Act had moved beyond the need for…
In a comment on my recent post “Four Things to Know about the Debate over Guns,” a reader quoted John F. Kennedy and George Washington on the value of an armed citizenry as a hedge against government tyranny. Yet, in the post itself, I never suggest eliminating gun ownership. I simply present statistics. Though I…