By Michael Kazin Michael Kazin’s critique of Howard Zinn was cited by Purdue President Mitch Daniels in response to the controversy over Gov. Daniels’ emails attacking Zinn. Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine, wrote this reaction to the issue. I don’t know if Daniels should be fired, but…
Yesterday, I posted about Mitch Daniels’ disturbing attacks as governor on the teaching of Howard Zinn’s books. Daniels and the Purdue University Board of Trustees have issued statements (reprinted below).
Writing for U.S. News and World Report, Luke Mullins has compiled “The Real Estate Euphemism Pocket Translator.” Here is a sample of the entries: Cozy Home: Too small for your big-screen TV. East Access to Everywhere: Can mean backing up to an expressway. Finishing Touches Needed: Often means lighting, hardware, paint, wood trim, and carpet.…
Cultural Representations of Higher Ed, No. 6 I am working backwards through this list. Here are films 101 to 150. The rankings are my own and in most cases somewhat arbitrary. The descriptions of the films are paraphrases of summaries found in a half-dozen print and online film guides. I compiled the list about a…
Yes, the new alarm from the Far Right, the ideological core of the political party that can find much additional funding for corporate agriculture but is unable to find a justification for the cost of the food-stamp and school-lunch programs, is that America is coming perilously close to being unable to defend itself. Forget about…
by: Ioana Literat, George Carstocea, Ash Kramer A reflection on the MOOC debate in higher education, this post was written in the context of Prof. Virginia Kuhn’s graduate seminar, IML 555: Digital Pedagogies, at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, University of Southern California. As students in this class, a key element of our research project was enrolling in…
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University, should be fired. That’s a statement I don’t make lightly. It’s also a statement I don’t make because of Daniels’ idiotic comments demeaning historian Howard Zinn. Instead, the problem with Daniels is his failure to understand or protect academic freedom, which is one of the…
Critics of our current political system have frequently complained about the “revolving door” through which former legislators and other government officials pass on their way to K Street—to earning riches as lobbyists. But there are some indications that another revolving door may be opening, to the presidential mansions on university campuses. Three U.S. presidents served…
“The truth is that I could have had gotten more money or more prestigious places.” So says David Patraeus, who has diffused a controversy about his pay for teaching a couple of courses (with numerous teaching assistants) at a City University of New York campus by refusing compensation of possibly $200,000 in favor of a…
Having some awareness of the concept and history of tragedy in the theater may be somewhat helpful, I think, in responding to an out-sized current event such as the George Zimmerman murder trial. Most people would assume that if the word “tragedy” were to be applied at all to this murder case, it would have…