The proposed intolerance policy at the University of California is a badly written, repressive, and fundamentally misguided policy that any true university should be embarrassed to even consider adopting. Universities are free to express collective values so long as they do not seek to punish those who disagree. But they ought to be careful in…
In July, Hank Reichman posted a piece on “a 542-page study examining the involvement of the nation’s psychologists and their largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association (APA), in the harsh interrogations of the post-9/11 years, [a study that] ‘raises repeated questions about the collaboration between psychologists and officials at both the C.I.A. and the…
The following is an expanded version of a letter to the editor published last week in the Louisiana State University Daily Reveille. The author is LSU Professor of Physics and Astronomy A.R.P. (Ravi) Rau, who serves currently as President of AAUP’s Louisiana Conference and is a former president of the LSU AAUP chapter. The text…
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “The College Crossroads.” New York Times 13 Sep. 2015: M, 17. [The Education Issue] . . . As higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for. In the United States, where I now teach, more than 17 million undergraduates will…
Recently, I posted an item on Sarah Palin’s abuse of the English language, which included her observation that if immigrants don’t want to be stigmatized, they should start “speaking American.” Very coincidentally, later on that same day, I came across an item in the discussion list for the American Dialect Society that included a link…
“Campus Sexual Assault Trial Congratulates Witch-Hunt Mind-Set [sic].” Legal Monitor Worldwide 12 Sep. 2015. Public universities should be able to use lower standards of evidence when deciding to expel students accused of sexual assault, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis said at a hearing in Washington, D.C. Polis, speaking at a higher education subcommittee meeting on…
This blog has included many posts about faculty members who have been demonized for statements that they have made on social media and/or who have been haunted, professionally and personally, by things that have been posted about them on social media or on the Web. Though there are permutations of this phenomenon specific to academia,…
The first is included in an article by Brentin Mock published in Atlantic. Titled “There Are No Urban Design Courses on Race and Justice, So We Made Our Own Syllabus,” the article includes the following list of suggested readings culled by Mock from a larger number of suggestions sent to him by the urban-design faculty…
“Change in any industry is difficult, but it is particularly problematic in higher education with its unique culture and history of shared governance.” So begins the description of the first “module” offered by the new Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. The Academy, which launches in November, bills itself as “the premier training ground for those…
As editors used to say, here is an item that I received “over the transom.” Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected, and are frequently humorous. 1. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research. 2. Where there’s…