“What we’re struggling with is a president who has a mission that doesn’t apparently involve active involvement in university life,” said Thomas Prusa, a professor of economics. “Maybe if the president was more tuned in, he would think that we have 58,000 students, 18 to 22 years old, and what exactly is happening? He is throwing…
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) just released a 359-page report (pdf) attacking Bowdoin College that proves one essential point: don’t criticize rich guys you golf with.
Part 1: Population and Population Movement People who are pro-labor often argue against right-to-work legislation by pointing out its fundamental unfairness to dues-paying union members and by arguing that, in weakening unions, it erodes the wages, benefits, and working conditions of all workers. I myself made such an argument in an earlier post to this…
The US Supreme Court has rejected Ward Churchill’s final appeal of his firing by the University of Colorado, and an ugly chapter in the history of academic freedom will now be left to the history books rather than the courts.
Although today is April Fool’s Day, these are not headlines from The Onion or another satiric site. They are, instead, simply very clever, unusual, or sometimes tortured headlines from actual news stories: 70,000+ Rolls of Toilet Paper Arrive for Detroit Firefighters A Bush-League President [Headline of an Article Critical of President Obama] A Mountain Lion…
This guest post is by Dennis Baron and is dated today, April 1, 2013, on his blog The Web of Language. Baron is a professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois. Deniers of global warming, the big bang, and evolution have a new target: language change. Arguing that language change is just a…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Ed: No. 2 Altbach, Philip G., Patricia J. Gumport, and Robert O. Berdahl, eds. American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. 3rd Edition. Eds. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2011. In selecting the essays included in this collection, the editors…
Control freaks have lost control of their urge to control. Today, cockroaches, as well as people, can be found in cities of more than 50,000, as well as in open cereal boxes. Before they developed a vaccine, many people were stricken with polo. If one looks at available statistics, it is obvious why birth control…
Reviews of Recent Books Concerning Current Issues in Higher Education: No. 1 Ginsberg, Benjamin. The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. New York: Oxford U P, 2011. Ginsberg’s book has very quickly become a seminal work in the growing body of scholarly literature dedicated to higher education’s…
When Aaron Barlow invited me to write this piece for Academe I had no idea what it would be unleashing. Quickly I receive several requests to republish/repost it, which included one from Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post. When this appeared, a phenomenon began that I still have trouble fully grasping. If you look you…