Roll Back the Free-Market/Privatization Education Boondoggle!

Let’s be blunt: There has never been anything behind “let the market do it” privatization schemes for education beyond a desire to tap into the stream of tax dollars going into education. If the people pushing for-profit colleges and charter schools really believed in the myths of the free market that they promote, they would not…

Keynote Address at the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association Academic Freedom Event: Part 1

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…

Keynote Address at the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association Academic Freedom Event: Part 2

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…

Should Campus Police Be Using Students as Drug Informants?

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…

Trying to Reduce Higher-Ed Costs without Addressing Administrative Bloat Is Only Making Things Worse

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…

Shamelessness, Not Moxie

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…