The new volume of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom is out today! Below, guest editor Michael Bérubé describes the contents. You can read the complete editor’s introduction here.–Gwendolyn Bradley I’m pleased to announce that volume six of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom is being published today. Of its sixteen essays, eight discuss the case…
Kevin Carey, writing in The New York Times last July, said this of American colleges and universities: “These organizations are not coherent academic enterprises with consistent standards of classroom excellence. When it comes to exerting influence over teaching and learning, they’re Easter eggs. They barely exist.” This is humbug. It’s an attempt to channel the…
In a guest post below, an author of the essay “Civility and Academic Freedom,” which appears in the new volume of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom describes his involvement with the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska and discusses the impetus for his essay: the Steven Salaita case.–Gwendolyn Bradley After Salaita: Keep Pushing for Academic Freedom!…
Here is what Scott Walker said in his exit speech: “The Bible is full of stories about people who are called to be leaders in unusual ways. Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message will rise to…
This from the Washington Post: “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker suspended his presidential campaign today, effectively ending a once-promising GOP presidential bid that collapsed over the summer. “Walker, who tumbled from top-tier status amid tepid debate performances and other missteps, had pulled back from other early-voting states in favor of a heavy focus on Iowa, where…
In the September 17 issue of the New York Times, Manu Joseph argues that the Modi government has been “Protecting the Internet, but Depriving India’s Poor.” Joseph highlights the fact that about three out of four Indians have never accessed the Internet because they cannot afford to pay for an Internet connection—even though a very…
In the July, 2015 issue of The Baffler, Siva Vaidhyanathan, one of today’s most insightful public intellectuals and a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, sparked by Thorstein Veblen’s 1918 book The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men, examines the current state of American higher education…
Burrows, Sister Joanne [President Clarke University]. “College More Valuable than Simple, Straight Path.” Telegraph Herald [Dubuque, IA] 20 Sep. 2015: A, 17. Current debates about what a college education should be, and be for, bring to mind the theorem: “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” That works until you leave…
Bowie, Liz. “The Towson U. Community Honors Maravene Loeschke; Memorial Pays Tribute to Former President Who Died of Cancer in June.” Baltimore Sun 19 Sep. 2015: A, 2. They sang, danced and told stories about Maravene Loeschke at Towson University on Friday, as hundreds celebrated the life of the late university president described as…
I did not become a college professor because I am particularly brave. I started a Masters’ program in American Studies at the University of Minnesota twenty-five years ago, thinking that it would enable me to teach community college, to piece together what the writer Jackie Regales calls “A Patchwork Life” of writing and teaching. I…