The following is the text of a press release issued this morning and posted on the AAUP’s web site: For Immediate Release July 9, 2014 Contacts: Howard Bunsis, chair AAUP-CBC or Aviva F. Bowen, Director of Communications, IFT Non-tenure track faculty in Champaign-Urbana join national movement to improve university working conditions and student success CHAMPAIGN –…
Obviously this is a riff on “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and I think even many “lesser-educated” people have heard this saying. But I wonder if the “more-educated” really know where the saying comes from. According to Wikipedia, the go-to source for persons also at the college-level, the line first appeared in Edward…
Having followed all of the comments on Sean Kennedy’s post and the follow-up post from the AAUP leadership, I’d like to offer several observations: It is very clear that no one has been prevented from expressing his or her opinions or from doing so without constraint. The comments do, however, collectively serve to illustrate why…
The following is a message from Diana Vallera, president of P-Fac, the Part-Time Faculty union at Columbia College Chicago, and a member of the Illinois AAUP State Council: You are invited to join P-Fac and UIC as we kickoff our new Pursuit of Truth Campaign to build a coalition of Chicago colleges and universities. Pursuit of…
Yesterday a guest blogger posted to this site an “Open Letter to Professional Staff Congress (CUNY) President Barbara Bowen.” The leadership of the AAUP has authorized the posting of the following response to that posting: On behalf of the AAUP, we want to stress, as prominently noted on the masthead above, that opinions published on…
I have never been a fan of student evaluations, even when I have received perfect scores, whatever that means, and I have never, ever, ever, given any incentives for students to complete their “student evaluations.” No, this will not be a revelation on how I was born-again and now my teaching life focuses immaturely on…
The National Association of College and University Business Officers NACUBO) issued its survey of private, non-profit four-year colleges last week. The results – a snapshot of the health of the higher education community – speak to the condition of the patient. It’s clear that the patient is suffering. The problem is that the origins, symptoms,…
The Department of Education and Corinthian Colleges have been engaged in extended negotiations over how the for-profit corporation will either shut down or scale down its various entities, including the Everest University, WyoTech, and Heald College chains. The government actions against Corinthian Colleges came after the Harkin Report highlighted Corinthian’s extraordinarily high student-loan default rate,…
Latham, Aaron. Orchids for Mother. New York: Little, Brown, 1977. Aaron Latham has written seven books, only two of them novels. Of the two novels, only one can be categorized in the espionage genre. Nonetheless, Orchids for Mother stands as one of the major American contributions to the genre. The novel focuses on the competition…
The other night I decided to take in some Bergman. I had a few choices, thanks to Amazon’s instant video streaming service. It made it possible for me to avoid my old standby, “The Seventh Seal” (“Det sjunde inseglet”). While it does feature a young, gaunt, and very Nordic looking Max von Sydow, whose hair…