Earlier today, I did a post on very clever political messaging from the Kasich presidential campaign. I closed that post with this observation: “Whatever limitations he may have as a speaker or as a campaigner, he has managed to offset them with a great deal of political experience and political savvy.” In this post, I…
All learning at all levels starts within the student. It ends there, too, but the start is what concerns those of us who teach. When the learning doesn’t start with the student, the student never becomes fully engaged; what results is a smorgasbord of sampled bits without cohesion. The fundamentals aren’t mastered for that primary…
Yesterday, some members of the Ohio Conference participated in a large rally in Columbus. Here is the beginning of a news report in the Columbus Dispatch: “More than 3,000 union workers and supporters marched this morning from the Arena District to the Greater Columbus Convention Center, where Americans for Prosperity is hosting its ninth annual…
Yesterday I received the following e-mail from the Governor Kasich’s presidential campaign: “Martin, Governor Kasich has a strong pro-life record and now anti-life groups are attacking him. Can you chip in and help John fight back? “No Governor in Ohio history has signed more pro-life legislation than Governor Kasich. The governor signed a ban on late-term abortions; began…
Writing for the Huffington Post, Shahien Nasiripour reports that “Borrowing for College Is Set to Hit a Five Year Low.” More specifically, for the first time since the 2009-2010 academic year, student loans are likely to total less than $100 million. That sounds like good news. But it actually reflects very little change. In fact,…
Nearly three hundred academic activists convened at the University of Denver July 23–26 for the 2015 AAUP/AAUP-CBC Summer Institute. An intensive series of workshops and seminars prepared participants to organize their colleagues, stand up for academic freedom, and advocate for research and teaching as the core priorities of higher education. This was one of the…
With the permission of the author, Amy King, I am re-posting this wonderful (not in the trite sense, but in the sense of provoking genuine wonder), challenging, and very thought-provoking poem that was distributed by Poets.org in their Poem-a-Day daily e-mail. _________________________ You Make the Culture Amy King The words became librarians, custodians of…
The following article was disseminated by the Campaign for America’s Future in its Progressive Breakfast daily newsletter. A link to a companion article is provided at the end of this post. The article is reprinted here with the permission of Roger Hickey who, with Robert Borsage, co-directs this progressive center and effort. Its website is…
This morning word came via AAUP Contingent Faculty Committee member Joe Berry’s indispensable COCAL Updates of the death last week of John Hess, following a six-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. John has been described by many as, in Berry’s words, “one of the fathers of the contingent faculty movement.” The description is well-merited; John’s work…
Earlier this week, on August 17, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a decision refusing to assert jurisdiction in the case of the Northwestern University grant-in-aid scholarship football players’ petition for an election seeking union representation. While this is a disappointment to those hoping that the Board would uphold the Regional Director’s ruling finding…