There are certainly times when it is morally necessary to resist one’s government. Thoreau wrote, “There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” Sometimes saying…
In other news from the GOP side of the presidential campaign, Chris Christie has suggested that he would consult with the CEO of FedEx on how to reduce our problems with illegal immigrants because FedEx accurately tracks ten of millions of packages per year. Almost immediately, Chistie was criticized for comparing human beings to parcels,…
So here is how Scott Walker’s opinion on building a wall along the entire U.S. and Canadian border has changed, once that the idea began to be lambasted as ludicrous. It started with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday: “Todd: We are talking about the southern border and building a fence there. We don’t…
A supplementary Report on the AAUP-Censured Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge appeared today. It deals with the dismissal of Teresa Buchanan: Buchanan, a specialist in early childhood education with an unblemished eighteen-year performance record, was being evaluated for promotion to full professorship when a district school superintendent and an LSU student filed complaints against her,…
September 1, 2015: When we released our letter on August 27, 2015 we had 125 signers. Despite the intimidation and harassment we have received at this blog site and elsewhere, more faculty have written to us asking that their names be included in the list of signatories–we now number 135. We are heartened by our…
In the “Undernews” newsletter distributed daily by the Progressive Review, David Sims of the Cass Business School in London distributed the following abstract from an unidentified academic paper: “Our patience with forming interpretations and reinterpretations of others’ behaviour is not unlimited. The time comes when we lose interest in trying to understand, and conclude that…
Inside Higher Ed has since its creation some years ago earned a largely justified reputation as a site more hospitable to views outside of the educational establishment and, in particular, views reflecting faculty experiences than other media covering higher education. Therefore it was disappointing this morning to read Doug Lederman’s lengthy article on debates over…
A new report from the Association for Public and Land-Grant Universities is titled Land-Grant but Unequal. Focusing on the funding for the HBCUs covered under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, the report offers the following conclusions: “From 2010-2012, 61 percent of 1890 land-grant institutions did not receive 100 percent of the one-to-one-matching funds from…
Sinking into insignificance in the presidential polling, Scott Walker has now suggested that building a wall along our border with Canada may be necessary to preserve our national security. Putting aside what this emphasis on walling out the world indicates about the current state of our national psyche—or at least the Far Right psyche—the proposals…
What follows is a news release from the U.S. Department of Energy. Given the controversy that has surrounded the Smithsonian Institute’s exhibit featuring the Enola Gay, this latest idea for a National Park, spread over three sites related to the Manhattan Project, seems, at best, a very dubious proposition, fiscally and politically—never mind morally. Even…