By Peter N. Kirstein Peter N. Kirstein is a professor of history at St. Xavier University, and the vice-president of the Illinois AAUP. Mitch Daniels is president of Purdue University, and considered a moderate Republican. I am not sure what that says about immoderate Republicans, but his recently publicized efforts as governor to ban Howard…
In his statement defending his efforts to censor Zinn’s book, Mitch Daniels argued, “Respected scholars and communicators of all ideologies agree that the work of Howard Zinn was irredeemably slanted and unsuited for teaching to schoolchildren.” Daniels’ office has been sending out quotes from seven historians critical of Zinn to support that claim. I surveyed…
This is a follow-up to John K. Wilson’s Posts on Mitch Daniels’ misunderstanding of academic freedom. Mitch Daniels’ and the Purdue Board of Trustees’ public defenses of his intention as governor of Indiana to prohibit the use of Howard Zinn’s histories in Indiana public schools focus largely, again, on Zinn’s supposed deficiencies as a historian.…
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…