Among School Children: A Review of Steven Salaita’s "Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom"

This is the second of our reviews of this book. The first one, published earlier today, can be found here. From dead infants in Gaza to Israeli students killed on the West Bank, from fragile undergraduates to childish administrators and trustees, from his own early years to the those of his son, Steven Salaita, in…

A Civil Salaita

Today is the publication of Steven Salaita’s new book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom (Haymarket Books). Salaita’s book is smart, charming, funny, intense, civil, and sincere—and it’s a powerful argument for just how wrong the University of Illinois trustees were to fire him. Salaita’s book may not persuade those who supported…

Who Says That the Spirit of Invention Is Dead in America? Or, a Brief but Ultimately Horrifying Exercise in Not-So-Free Association Involving Pizza, Rats, and the Various Meanings of "Viral"

This photo was originally posted on Pinterest, and it has, as they say, gone viral: And if you happen to live in or are visiting a big city such as New York, this clever bit of American ingenuity may just keep the rats from dragging off your pizza slices when you’re not looking: Oh, and,…

Well, This Isn’t Good

  But, on the plus side, I am less than ten years from retirement.   This is the beginning of a fairly lengthy article that appeared in yesterday’s Dayton Daily News: “Experts say Wright State University’s use of a work visa program to bring in low-cost foreign workers for jobs at area private companies typifies…

Diane Ravitch on Arne Duncan’s Departure and the Obama Administration’s Disconnect on What Public Education Is and What It Represents

Of all the responses to Arne’s Duncan’s announced resignation from the Department of Education, Diane Ravitch’s has the most succinct and incisive: “In the car yesterday, I heard a report that Arne Dyncan was stepping down. President Obama said: He did more than anyone else to bring American education into the 21at century, sometimes kicking…

Is Anybody Home?

Something has happened to the way I read scholarly articles.  Unless I can sense a person behind the words, I drift off. No more “objectivity” for me, thank you. Give me the same information, but let me know who is providing it, and why I should trust them. This is beginning to prove to be…

College Recruiting: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Last week, Inside Higher Education published its 2015 Survey of College and University Admission Directors. Planned to coincide with the annual meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling held in San Diego, IHE drew responses from 264 admission directors, taken from a mix of public and private colleges and universities. The respondents replied…

The Kids Aren't Intolerant

April Kelly-Woessner argued last week at Heterodox Academy that “young people are less politically tolerant than their parents’ generation.” Titled, “How Marcuse made today’s students less tolerant than their parents,” Kelly-Woessner blames intolerance by young people on 1960s New Left theories of “repressive tolerance.” While she raises some important concerns about intolerance, Kelly-Woessner misses the…