Remarkable Idiocy: "Economically-driven Education"
From Mercedes Schneider….
The Kids Are All Right!
History has always been contested. After all, whoever controls the past controls the future and whoever controls the present controls the past, or so George Orwell once famously put it. The latest example is the brouhaha raised by some conservatives over the College Board’s rather modest revision of the “curriculum framework” for high school Advanced…
Banned Books Quiz
A few days ago I posted a brief piece, “Which Banned Book Are You?“, that linked to a quiz posted by librarians at Columbus State Community College to promote the annual Banned Books Week, which runs through tomorrow. My post has since had over 5,000 visits and has been the most visited post on this…
Response of the FSU Progress Coalition to the BoT Decision to Appoint John Thrasher as FSU President
Throughout the presidential search process at Florida State University, students were told that their voices were being heard. But really? Who was listening? The media was listening, the nation was listening, FSU alumni, faculty, and staff were listening. But the corporate/political elite, the 11 members of the Board of Trustees that voted for John Thrasher…
Florida State University Names a New President: Or, How a University Can Be Commandeered by Political Partisanship
After a very contentious search, the Board of Trustees of Florida State University have announced that John Thrasher will be the institution’s new president. The firm originally hired to facilitate the search was fired after faculty and students organized protests against the firm’s very obvious interest in promoting Thrasher’s candidacy and very superficial interest in…
The Adjunct Cookbook
Here’s a creative but effective educational and organizing tool that our colleagues in the AAUP chapter at Front Range Community College in Colorado have published and which merits the broadest distribution: The Adjunct Cookbook, described as “48 pages of foodbank-friendly concoctions,” including “No Bucks Coffee Drinks,” “The Frappes of Wrath,” as well as “high-fat,…
Why Educators and Students Don't Need the Apple iPhone 6 and Plus or XYZ
The launch of the new Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is big in every way if you count numbers. Orders in the first 24 hours are said to have been more than 4 million strong, and according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, “Apple’s main manufacturing supplier, Hon…
CCSF Accreditation Case Will Proceed to Trial
On Friday Judge Curtis Karnow refused to halt the October 27 trial that will determine if the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) properly evaluated City College of San Francisco (CCSF) before voting to revoke its accreditation. (Links to my previous posts on the CCSF accreditation controversy will be found at the conclusion…
The Salaita Case and the "Two Cultures" of Academia
Yesterday, Inside Higher Ed published a provocative article, “A House Divided,” suggesting that attitudes toward the summary dismissal of controversial professor Steven Salaita by the University of Illinois may reflect the “enduring power” of C.P. Snow’s famous “two cultures” thesis. Snow’s argument was that the academic world contains two distinctive and often conflicting cultures, that…
Believing in Wizards
There are certain debates in a representative democracy that are eternal for a reason–and that reason often lies the nature of humanity and human vanity. One of these debates, in the United States, was first apparent in the animosity between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. It was recapped a little less than a century ago in Walter Lippmann’s…