Bobby Jindal has jumped on the Sam Brownback/Scott Walker bandwagon and has cut taxes every year that he has been office. The problem is that he has not been able to cut spending as fast as he has been cutting taxes. The dramatic drop in oil and gas prices has cut deeply into one of…
Two recent posts to Diane Ravitch’s blog have provided links to responses to President Obama’s proposal to provide free community college. The first item is “The Trojan Horse of ‘Free’ Community College,” an op-ed published at Truthout [http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/28637-the-trojan-horse-of-free-community-college#]. It is written by Adam Bessie, a faculty member at a California community college whose personal blog…
“Right to work” provides workers on the losing side in a vote to unionize a workplace with the right to decide that the results of that democratic vote do not apply to them. “Right to work” provides workers with the right to benefit from unions to which they do not pay any dues. “Right to…
[Guest Blogger Ira Allen is an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University of Beirut.] In November of last year, alongside scholars from around the disciplines, I signed an open letter written by philosopher John Protevi. The letter urged Marquette University to support embattled philosophy graduate student Cheryl Abbate and to “take steps…
An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a conference held at the libertarian Cato Institute promoting a report from the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which concludes that conservative-leaning academic centers on college and university campuses founded by wealthy donors “are not just surviving but thriving.” The report estimates…
From Kansas, the state that gave us the most repressive social media policy in the country, a negative model for defenders of academic freedom everywhere, now comes HB 2234, a proposed piece of legislation that declares: The state board of regents, the board of trustees of any community college, the board of regents of any…
The Board of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies on Tuesday released a “detailed clarification” of its controversial decision to reject an offer by Professor Stephen F. Cohen, his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and the KAT Foundation to fund a dissertation research fellowship program named for Cohen and his late mentor, Robert…
“Brian Williams Admits He Wasn’t on Copter Shot Down in Iraq,” says the headline in The New York Times. The newscaster “apologized Wednesday for mistakenly claiming he had been on a helicopter that was shot down.” A decade-and-a-half ago, Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis apologized for having claimed in his classrooms to have served in…
Although they have continued to provoke some controversy, school dress codes have become commonplace in primary and secondary schools. But at the college level, dress codes would seem very anachronistic. So, when I came across a small item that suggested that a student dress code had been proposed but not adopted at Purdue University, I…
L’Amour, Louis. Bendigo Shafter. New York: Dutton, 1978. Literary critics have generally disregarded Louis L’Amour as an author of very formulaic novels in a sub-literary genre. Certainly, his prodigious output might suggest a more workmanlike than reflective approach to writing fiction. For over three decades, L’Amour produced at least three novels each year, becoming…