Fundraising Embarrassment at Portland State University

This guest post is by Michael J. Clark, Associate Professor of English and Director, Center for Public Humanities at Portland State University. The recent fundraising contretemps at Portland State University has embarrassed the institution, along with its many committed administrators, donors, faculty, and staff. While the failures in the oversight process by university fundraising executives have been chronicled by…

AAUP Joins Amicus Brief in Vergara Case

A bit more than a year ago a California Superior Court, ruling in Vergara v. California, overturned California statutes guaranteeing due process protections for K-12 teachers with more than two years experience (so-called “teacher tenure”) and layoff by seniority.  At the time I posted several items on the case, first here, then here, here, and…

Moving beyond Compliance to Foster a Culture of Inclusivity

In their September-October 2015 Academe article, “Increasing Access and Making Practice More Inclusive through Disability Awareness Training,” Carrie E. Rood and Michelle L. Damiani share their experience with creating a training module for new graduate teaching assistants at Syracuse University. They designed the module, called “Disability Awareness and Culture,” in order to educate teaching assistants…

The Corporate University and the Dumbing of the American Mind

This is a guest post by David Schultz, a contributor to the September-October issue of Academe and professor of political science at Hamline University. He was formerly AAUP chapter president at Trinity University in Texas and Minnesota state chair for AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Higher education’s business plan, as I argue in  “The Rise and Coming Demise of the…

The Top 200 Universities Worldwide

These are the QS World University Rankings of the Top 200 Universities for 2015. For an explanation of the methodology used to produce these rankings and for other rankings provided by QS World University Rankings, go to the website at: http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings.

That Was Then; This is Now: Part 1

This is a re-post from Ana Fores-Tamayo’s blog Adjunct Justice [http://adjunct-justice.blogspot.com/]. Given that the issue of undocumented immigrants in the United States has moved to the forefront during this year’s still nascent presidential campaign, and given that much of the discussion of immigration has been quite generalized and abstract, this sort of personalized perspective on…

U.S. Higher Education News for September 15, 2015

  Carey, Kevin. “How One’s Choice of College Affects Future Earnings.” New York Times 15 Sep. 2015: A, 3. Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because…

Hindu American Foundation Statement

The Hindu American Foundation[i] (HAF) Board of Directors notes an anonymous[ii] posting on this blog site on September 16, 2015, ostensibly representing over one hundred scholars with expertise in South Asia that co-signed a statement[iii] also previously posted here.  After publicly calling for a debate and spirited conversation over the upcoming visit of Indian Prime…