Back on January 2 of this year I posted to this blog a piece entitled “How NOT to Oppose the Academic Boycott of Israel.” As should be well known to readers, the AAUP takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but does oppose all academic boycotts as a matter of principle. Hence, when the American…
I should have expected the exploitative nature of news coverage concerning Ebola. I don’t know why I thought the news media would offer an educational experience. Offerings on television and on websites have much in common with Shark Week and the coverage of the O.J. Simpson disaster. Watching a patient being transported from an airport…
Professor Steven Salaita on October 8, 2014 spoke at Columbia College Chicago that I previously commented on. John Dworkin asked the panelists, Steven Salaita, Iymen Chehade and myself whether we would consent to being taped and YouTubed: a neologism? Mr. Dworkin recently released on his YouTube channel videos of the three panelists. Here are parts one and…
“To be absolutely blunt, it is time for individual faculty to give up, cheerfully and not grudgingly, any claim to sole authority over teaching methods of any kind.” – Former Princeton President William Bowen earlier this week at the “Teaching in the University of Tomorrow” conference at Rice University (via Jason Jones). That’s a pretty…
The Collegiate Employment Research Institute released findings recently reporting that hiring for new bachelor’s degree recipients will increase by 16 percent in 2014-2015. The Center based its findings on surveying among 5,700 employers. Commenting in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Institute’s Director, Philip D. Gardner, believes that the brighter outlook is because “the economy…
A few days ago Marty Kich posted an item on this blog that reported an effort by gun-rights advocates in Oklahoma to pass legislation that will allow guns to be brought onto the state’s 25 public college and university campuses. An officer of the state’s Second Amendment Association promotes the legislation in these terms: “’Anywhere…
Academe: September-October 2014 Volume 100, Issue 5 FEATURES Overcoming the Challenges of Contingent Faculty Organizing By David Kociemba Organizing for Advocacy By Miranda Merklein Making a Tangible Difference in Campus Culture in One Year By Simeon Dreyfuss Turning Back the Tide on Contingency By Ron Bramhall The Secrets of Successful Membership Recruitment By Christopher Vecsey An…
This weekend’s Wall Street Journal featured a well-intentioned piece, “A Musical Fix For U.S. Schools,” which took up nearly 3/4 of a page with a huge accompanying photograph of a child playing the trumpet. Unfortunately this visual only added to the Oliver Twist like desperation of can I have some more porridge please, as the…
The first of these stories, “Gun Activists Lobbhy for Weapons on Campus,” appeared in the Norman Transcript [http://www.normantranscript.com/news/article_52a58aa0-4b3d-11e4-89de-0f889f7b5efd.html]. Gun-rights activists are pushing for legislation that will allow guns to be brought onto the state’s 25 public college and university campuses. Don Spencer, Vice President of the state’s Second Amendment Association, is promoting the legislation in…
Doctorow, E. L. Welcome to Hard Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. After his discharge from the army, E. L. Doctorow found a job as a script reader at Columbia Pictures. After reading a great many scripts for Westerns, he became convinced that he could write a more credible and still entertaining Western. He…