Although the more overtly political spending of the Koch brothers has received much more attention, the Walton Family Foundation has, not surprisingly, been one of the major supporters of right-wing think tanks and public-policy experiments. Long a major donor to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the…
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Spy. 1821. James Fenimore Cooper produced novels that became prototypes for several genres of popular fiction. In fact, his significance as an influence in this regard has a great deal to do with the resurgence in broader critical interest in his work. The Spy is the first notable American novel to…
I am posting the following letter to this blog for three reasons: (1) it illustrates the types of complex and specialized issues that state conference leaders are frequently asked to address; (2) in some instances, such as this one, the conference leadership may take the position that there simply was not enough faculty input into…
This “book” seems very analogous to the sections of the WalMart and McDonald’s websites that are devoted to “career opportunities” with those companies–as if any significant number of those in the corporate management have worked their way up from stocking shelves, working the cash registers, or putting together sandwiches. Of course, adjunct faculty have invested so…
Yesterday Inside Higher Ed published a brief item entitled “Skeptical Reception for New Book on Becoming Adjunct.” The article reported on a new 51-page book, available for free via the Internet, with the remarkable title Become a Part-Time Professor: live and teach anywhere you like. Needless to say, more than a few “part-time professors” have…
American colleges and universities face a growing crisis in how to fund and even prioritize their capital construction needs. While most recognize that higher education institutions on some level can be reduced to the outcome produced by the intersection of people, programs and facilities, they typically mismanage how they approach facilities design and development. It’s…
My wife hates Faulkner. With a passion. So when we got married, there was no problem with my raiding her book collection and appropriating the novelist’s Light in August. I still have the copy, its blue-and-white cover, inside my wife’s signature in a girl’s handwriting, and a few notes made in the margin, mostly dutiful…
Because the undergraduate education I received at Wellesley College has been so important in my life, and because I believe all college students deserve the intellectual engagement Wellesley gave me, I can no longer donate to Wellesley College. The education Wellesley College gave me has been central to how I understand what it is to…
At least for the moment, this one report did more than anything previously to change the conversation on increased college costs from faculty salaries and productivity to bloated executive salaries and to some extent administrative bloat. Unfortunately, the earlier report from the Young Invincibles on the steep declines in state support did not receive the…
Clancy, Tom. The Cardinal of the Kremlin. New York: Putnam, 1984. Tom Clancy’s novels have proved so popular that they have spawned a large number and range of imitators. Bridging the action-adventure and espionage genres, Clancy’s novels have come to define a new genre, the techno-thriller. Most of Clancy’s novels have featured C.I.A. analyst Jack…