Conservatives often portray academia as a place teeming with the influence of liberalism. The all-powerful liberal professors, so the stereotype goes, indoctrinate students with Marxism and political correctness, while muscling conservatives out of the ivory tower, lest their hated views bring a diversity of opinion to campus. But of course, like any caricature, it’s false.…
Daniel Grant writes at Inside Higher Ed about the question of controversial art: “There are no rules of the road to help art instructors and college administrators in this realm.” Actually, there are many rules of the road long established by the art world and the theorists of freedom of speech. It’s very easy: you…
If you follow higher education, you know that the number of students and recent graduates who are interning is higher than ever before. Whether they’re part- or full-time, during school or after graduation, paid or unpaid, internships are becoming a ubiquitous part of early professional experience. By one estimate, as many as three-quarters of college…
The humanities have more to lose in the current budget wars than either the sciences or technical fields, says AAUP president Cary Nelson, in “Fighting for the Humanities,” just out in the new issue of Academe (the full issue will be released next week). This is because people take it for granted that scientific knowledge…
There was lot of Twitter buzz this weekend about a roundtable at the Modern Language Association convention in Seattle on the fight for public higher education (see a roundup of Tweets). The roundtable (organized by yours truly, although in the end I wasn’t able to participate) included Michelle Masse, Jeffrey Williams, Jason Jones, Bob Samuels,…
I’ve been tempted not to comment on the Penn State scandal simply because of the massive attention it’s already received and the fact that speaking out against child molestation is hardly a controversial stand. But the scandal is important precisely because of that attention, and what lessons are drawn from it. Henry A. Giroux and…
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), “While all of 2011’s Speech Codes of the Month flagrantly violated students’ and faculty members’ right to free expression, two of them were so egregious that they deserve special mention as 2011’s Speech Codes of the Year.” But FIRE got a lot of things wrong…
Rick Santorum certainly knows how to pander to an audience. He’s running far to the right in Iowa for the Republican Presidential nomination, and so he goes after those darn librul professors: “Let’s look at colleges and universities,” he said. “They’ve become indoctrination centers for the left. Should we be subsidizing that?” He also criticized…
Call for articles: transFORMATIONS The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy ANNOUNCES A SPECIAL ISSUE TEACHING UNDER ATTACK CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The editors of Transformations seek articles (5,000-10,000 words) and media essays (overviews on books, film, video, performance, art, music, websites, etc. 3,000 to 5,000 words) and items for an occasional feature, “The Material Culture…
Rush Limbaugh normally hates class warfare. So it was a bit unusual today when he came out and denounced millionaires. Of course, Limbaugh only hates one particular kind of millionaire: college presidents. Limbaugh declared, the bottom line here is 36 college presidents make a million dollars a year or more. Where is Occupy Wall Street?…