Soon after I returned from Peace Corps service in 1990, I started to hear of a new organization called “Teach for America.” People fancied it as something of a domestic Peace Corps, which rankled. Not only did I remember the suspicion toward VISTA volunteers in Western North Carolina in the sixties, but I knew the reasons…
Joining the AAUP says that you want to help shape the future of our profession. You want a voice in matters such as academic freedom, faculty governance, career issues, tenure, economic security for contingent faculty, and the overuse of contingent appointments. By joining the AAUP, you help shape the future of our profession. In addition, there…
By Craig Vasey As the new chair of the AAUP’s Committee on Teaching, Research, and Publications, I asked the committee members what we could do this year to be of service to the AAUP and to the profession. One theme that emerged was the impact that teaching evaluations can have on careers; we reviewed the…
From October, 1985 to July, 1987, I taught at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso as a Senior Fulbright Fellow in American Studies and Literature. It was an interesting–and sometimes frightening–time. Two years before I arrived, a leftist firebrand from the Upper Volta (the name of the country at the time) military named Thomas…
By Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy Project The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are best-known for donating millions to the election campaigns of Tea Party candidates and others committed to fighting regulation of business and to protecting the oil and gas industries from efforts to combat climate change. It turns out that Charles Koch, through…
Unfortunately, online education, or its include-all moniker “online,” tends to be lined up against face-to-face or classroom instruction, as if the two were gunfighters. Even if in the minds of some one of the parties walks away the victor, that party has more than the usual shoulder or arm wound than that of the winner…
In September I posted a piece entitled “The Kids Are All Right!” in which I praised high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado, who staged mass walkouts to protest a plan by their right-wing school board to establish a curriculum-review committee to not only respond to an allegedly “leftist” AP framework but to promote patriotism,…
Last week, Robin Meade won a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a district court decision that had dismissed her lawsuit against Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. By Robin Meade The police chief handed me the envelope stating he had no idea what was in it, he was just…
For several years, the media has highlighted the importance of capital campaigns to relieve the financial burden at many colleges and universities. In doing so, they focus on the scale at the largest research universities where these campaigns now approach $5 billion in announced campaign goals. In doing so, they also typically set the campaign…
After the 2012 presidential election, it became apparent that Mitt Romney was very surprised that he lost the election because his internal polling had indicated that he was not just ahead, but solidly ahead, in most of the key battleground states. Progressives found that disconnection from reality quite amusing and attributed it, in Bill Maher’s…