Rudy Fichtenbaum, President American Association of University Professors First I want to thank the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association for inviting me to attend your Academic Freedom Event. I do not consider myself to be an expert on academic freedom. Thus, I am all the more so truly honored that you have asked me…
Rudy Fichtenbaum, President American Association of University Professors While cases such as the ones I have been discussing receive lots of public attention, they pale in comparison a number of other threats to academic freedom, mainly the attacks on public sector unions and growing use of faculty who are hired on contingent contracts. In the…
The other morning, I was reading on the 2 train on my way to school, reading a book on education issues that a publisher had sent me for review. The subway wasn’t crowded, maybe a dozen or so others in the car. One was a young woman who, I noticed, was eyeing me from across…
Here are the opening paragraphs of an article that appeared in yesterday’s Boston Globe: “The University of Massachusetts Amherst announced Monday that it will review aspects of a campus police department program that uses students as confidential drug informants, after a disclosure that an informant for the university police died of a heroin overdose. “The…
In the mid-1990s, Pearson, which, to that point, had been a media conglomerate, set out to become the world’s largest publisher of textbooks. Within a decade, it bought up most of the most recognizable imprints—and most of those that it didn’t buy up have been bought up by its major competitor, McGraw-Hill. In the early…
John T. McNay, a professor of history at UC-Blue Ash, is president of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors. The following op-ed appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on September 28 and is available at: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/09/28/opinion-bloat-driving-uc-miami-costs/16410479/ We appreciate the column by David Hodge, president of Miami University, and Santa Ono, president…
Clark, Walter van Tilburg. The Track of the Cat. New York: Random House, 1949. Walter van Tilburg Clark had one of the more puzzling careers in recent American letters. His first novel, The Ox-Bow Incident, was widely praised, and its successful adaptation to film brought even more attention to it. His second novel, The…
Jon Husted, who has done more than any secretary of state outside of Florida and North Carolina to restrict voting opportunities, is running ads touting his efforts to insure that all military personnel have had the opportunity to vote. Husted’s efforts to restrict early voting and to disqualify provisional ballots just ahead of the 2012…
Guest blogger Michael Behrent is an associate professor of history at Appalachian State University and President of the ASU Chapter of the AAUP. This was first published as a letter-to-the-editor of The Appalachian. College is one of the most thrilling times of your life: a time to learn, discover yourself, and forge lifelong relationships. If this is…
In his New York Times column today, David Brooks examines a Lewis Mumford essay from 1940. Brooks also writes of “Those who threaten civilization — Stalin then, Putin and ISIS now” and he says that Mumford was examining “liberals’ tendency, in 1940, to hang back in the central conflict of the age, the fight against totalitarianism.” There’s a…