James Danko, president of Butler University, speaks out on the new Indiana “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA): While I have read a variety of opinions and rationale for RFRA, it strikes me as ill-conceived legislation at best, and I fear that some of those who advanced it have allowed their personal or political agendas to…
Corinthian Colleges have been forced to close their “doors.” As I reported in this blog several years ago, the Washington Post Corporation, which had derived between 50% and 60% of its annual profits from its ownership share of Kaplan University quietly sold off its stock just ahead of the formal release of the Harkin Report…
That’s how NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen responded to James O’Keefe in 2011. Given the context, it seemed an appropriate response. Personally, I was a little annoyed by the timing: My article on O’Keefe and fellow right-wing pseudo-journalist Andrew Breitbart was already complete and ‘typeset’ for News with a View: Essays on the Eclipse of Objectivity…
The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice announced the indictment today of Graeme Phillip Harris for hanging a noose and an obsolete Georgia state flag with the confederate stars and bars over the iconic statue of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Mr Meredith integrated the Oxford, Mississippi institution in 1962, amidst klan-imposed death and…
We have all noticed how hard it is to find a reputable electrician or plumber. But almost no one ever asks, never mind addresses, why this shortage has developed. The major reason that so few people are going into the trades is that, more often than not, doing so leads to just another kind of…
Everyone seems to think that college is all about jobs. Even former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in a column on his blog this past Sunday, “Why College Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Have to be) for Everyone,” writes, “all too often the jobs they land after graduating don’t pay enough to make the degree worthwhile.” That may…
Ohio State University is internally circulating a draft of a new policy on faculty intellectual property rights. The following summary of the main outlines of the lengthy and very detailed draft revision was published in an article in the Columbus Dispatch: “The proposal says that all intellectual property created by faculty, staff and students belongs…
The recent decision by the Board of Trustees to close Sweet Briar College raises an important question. Is there a better way to coordinate the findings of ratings groups to assist colleges and universities going forward? What would have happened if Sweet Briar College had worked more closely with a better educated group of internal and external…
This post raises issues of research and public information, as well as the role of a “public intellectual,” that are certainly worthy of consideration here.