Eighty Years Ago Today San Francisco Workers Fought Police and Began a Successful General Strike: What it Might Mean for Us Today

While enjoying my coffee this morning I caught up on the latest Academe blog posts by Aaron and Marty on the important and continuing theme of the exploitation of adjunct faculty.  I then turned to this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, where I found an absorbing article reporting that today, July 5, marks the 80th anniversary…

The Looming Crisis in Higher Education

The “real problem” behind the exploitation of adjunct faculty is quite obvious: universities have continued to produce a reasonable number of Ph.D.’s but no longer are willing to hire a reasonable number of them into full-time, never mind tenure-track, positions. This situation will change when enrollment in graduate programs starts to contract, and even to…

What to Expect after the Hobby Lobby Decision

If one wants to know what to expect after the Supreme Court’s decision on the Hobby Lobby case, one need only to look at what has followed two other recent and controversial decisions by the Roberts Court. In April, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court upheld a Michigan ban on affirmative action. Justice Roberts…

A Swede Appreciates Fourth of July

When I was a child visiting America, I remember my aunt having these square pans, deep, with chocolate cake, and upon it in the right colors, the American flag was drawn in enough sweetness to now make my teeth hurt.  That was the summer, too, she took me to a drive-through bank, and I recall…