The Kings of Hypocrisy: Dinesh D’Souza’s Downfall
It’s tempting to celebrate the news that Dinesh D’Souza has been forced to resign his position as president of King’s College in New York.
Taking College Out of the Teacher-Training Process
”I don’t think the higher education programs are going away, and that wouldn’t be my intention.” So says Shael Polakow-Suransky of New York City’s Department of Education. Nice, but Education Departments are not likely to be too happy with the intention of moving teacher training from certification programs in colleges and universities to in-house programs (though…
Yet Another Big Danger in For-Profit Higher Education
In August, Aaron Barlow, the editor of Academe and the Academe Blog, posted a piece on the blog addressing the possibility that electronic technologies might have the same impact on higher education as they have had on journalism. Aaron made the case that academia is fundamentally different than journalism in enough ways that our individual…
Supreme Court hears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas
This is a guest post by Yen Tran, a legal fellow in the AAUP’s Washington office. On Wednesday, I attended part of the US Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the case Fisher v. University of Texas. As a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, a minority student, a Texas resident, and someone…
CUNY Pathways: Waiting for Leadership
Over the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein’s message to the faculty about the Queensborough Community College uproar. That it doesn’t sit well with many faculty members should be obvious from even a cursory reading (Pathways, for those who don’t know, is a top-down CUNY initiative aimed…
Queensborough Community College Faculty Senate Resolutions
As promised: Subject: Resolutions adopted 10-9-12 ACADEMIC SENATE QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE, CUNY Resolutions adopted as College Policy October 9, 2012 I. RESOLUTION IN AFFIRMATION OF QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE REMAINING A VIABLE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION Whereas, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York is obliged to honor its legal obligations and the agreements it…
Queensborough Community College: The Saga Continues
This came to my inbox a few minutes ago: Queensborough Community College Faculty defy threats and act to require college to offer required courses Queens, New York – October 9, 2012 – Under pressure, threats and intimidation of the college faculty by the CUNY Chancellery, the Academic Senate of Queensborough Community College in Bayside this…
Only Words?
It’s only words, and words are all I have. – The Brothers Gibb When I was in fourth grade and was beginning to graduate from the children’s section of the local public library, I reached mainly for biographies and other books related to the Civil War. It was 1961, after all, and the centennial was…
Leadership in Scholarship: A Faculty Role
The blog Retraction Watch, on its FAQ page, states: We wholeheartedly agree it’s important to check out tips — anonymous or not — about potentially dodgy papers. But doing that right would require a much larger team, so we’ve decided that publicizing retractions that do happen — and finding out why papers were retracted, not…
Administrators ≠ Leaders
[Guest blogger Michael DeCesare teaches in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at Merrimack College, North Andover, MA.] I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. James Madison Speech in the Virginia Convention June 16, 1788…