Silvio Lacetti is a recently retired professor from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. While attending a retirement party for a colleague, he happened upon an intriguing idea: What if, rather than having a single retirement party, he organized dozens of small dinners, with one of his old students at each? And rather than…
In a conversation with a newly retired and highly respected college president late last week, the conversation turned to the growing problem of how to govern American colleges and universities in uncertain times. American higher education operates on a system of shared governance. It is often presented as a 3-leg stool with each leg balancing…
The September-October issue of Academe has just been posted (and will be in your mailboxes soon). In the issue, Rick Perloff looks at the campaign to unionize Cleveland State University twenty years ago, and William Vesterman looks even further back—to turn-of-the-century economist Thorstein Veblen—to learn lessons about the university today. Leslie Bary uses the benefit…
Today in Capeheart v. Terrell (2013 IL App (1st) 122517), an Appellate Court of Illinois overturned a state court’s previous ruling that NEIU (Northeastern Illinois University) officials were protected by Illinois’ anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law against a defamation suit by NEIU professor Loretta Capeheart. The appellate ruling reinstates Capeheart’s lawsuit, and means…
The Far Right’s favorite euphemism is “reform.” Their notion of “reform” is the equivalent of “reforming” a criminal by executing him. Or since many on the Far Right (Ted Nugent, for certain) would applaud that analogy, it is the equivalent of running a chainsaw through the base of a shade tree in order to “save”…
This is crossposted from Daily Kos at the request of Aaron Barlow: The testing, accountability, and choice strategies offer the illusion of change while changing nothing. They mask the inequity and injustice that are now so apparent in our social order. They do nothing to alter the status quo. They preserve the status quo. They…
These are the Secretary of Labor’s prepared remarks. He apparently diverged in some instances from these prepared remarks in reaction to the very enthused response from the crowd at the convention. _________________________ Good morning, brothers and sisters! What a great honor to be here with this extraordinary gathering of dedicated and powerful champions for working…
Guest blogger Peter Dreier is Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His latest book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books, 2012). Dear Mitch Daniels: I’ve learned from recent news reports that thanks to your efforts as governor to…
At the outset, I want to apologize if I have gotten any of the details of this story wrong. It’s very complex, and I have had to piece it together from a number of sources. The Adjunct Faculty Association had not gone on strike since 1982. The Taylor Law makes public-employee strikes illegal in New…
Yesterday I received yet another e-mail reporting on the results of this week’s elections. This is an excerpt from an e-mail sent by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the PAC headed by Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly: “While we were organizing nationally for the Colorado recalls, our Americans for Responsible Solutions members in Missouri…