Diane Ravitch’s Blog includes two items of considerable interest on the topic of the computer grading of essays. In the first post, titled simply “Why Computers Should Not Grade Student Essays” [http://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/03/why-computers-should-not-grade-student-essays-2/], Ravitch chronicles the efforts to create software that can generate essays that the grading software will evaluate as excellent. Although the computer-generated essays…
This is a guest post by Tim Shiell, a contributor to the newest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Shiell is a Professor of Philosophy and founder and Associate Director of the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. He primarily teaches ethics courses and researches issues at the intersection of law, ethics and…
This morning, through a piece on Salon, I was introduced to an article by fiction-writer Will Self on George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” As I will be teaching that essay Monday in my Specialized Communications for Technology Students class, I was particularly interested in taking a look, especially after reading Salon‘s Laura Miller’s rather negative…
This is a guest post by Jenny Bossaller, a contributor to the newest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Professor Bossaller teaches library and information science at the University of Missouri. She studies social aspects of information access and use, informed by critical theory and concentrating on social justice. Jenna Kammer, an instructional designer and doctoral student…
One Adjunct’s Reflection on the 11th International Conference of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL) By Chris Cruz-Boone In a candid moment at the COCAL XI debriefing, organizers admitted that the high cost of travel to the New York City location limited conference access for many adjuncts living on fixed incomes. I was fortunate…
This is a guest post by Richard F. Teichgraeber III, a contributor to the newest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Teichgraeber is professor of history at Tulane University. His most recent book is Building Culture: Studies in the Intellectual History of Industrializing America, 1867-1910. He is completing work on the introduction and annotation of a new…
This is a guest post by Gerry Turkel, a contributor to the newest issue of the Journal of Academic Freedom. Turkel is a professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of Delaware, teaches courses in social theory, law and society, and politics and society. He has published articles in numerous journals, including Law and Society,…
University of Illinois emeritus professor Robert Weissberg published an essay this week with the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a right-wing think tank, in which he argues about the Salaita case: “The trustees are not guilty of violating free speech; their sin is cowardice in overseeing the faculty. They did not perform…
Among the articles in this year’s edition of the Journal of Academic Freedom is one I wrote on the history of the founding of the AAUP. Since I am not a professional historian (I teach computer science), I feel like I should offer an explanation (and to my colleagues who are historians, an apology) for…
World Net Daily, the main source of news for those who think that National Review and American Spectator suffer from a creeping liberal bias, reports the following on the latest appearance on Sean Hannity’s FOX News show by Phil Robertson, the scion of the Duck Dynasty clan: “Phil Robertson, who got himself suspended from the…