Last week, an InsideHigherEd article about ROTC at Brown University contained an unfortunate but all too common error: “Like many of their counterparts, Brown professors voted in 1969 to remove ROTC from campus…” This never happened, at Brown or (as far as I’m aware) any other university. As the Brown committee’s report makes clear, it…
George Leef of Art Pope’s Center for Higher Education Policy denounces Jane Mayer’s recent profile of Pope in the New Yorker as a “scurrilous attack.” But Leef’s response reveals how accurate many of the critiques were. Leef argues, “it’s no more possible to ‘buy the curriculum’ than it is to corner the silver market.” His…
By Joe Berry COCAL Updates (Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor) http://www.chicagococal.org/ 1. A nice little history of anti-Wall Street protests in US history and some useful suggestive lessons. 2. Recent grads turn to adjuncting. 3. The new Emmy award-winning documentary on the freedom riders of 1961 has many lessons for us, especially just now.…
Today’s Chicago Tribune has a lengthy front-page article about how the University of Illinois’ general fund subsidizes the athletic program with $920,000 in free tuition waivers for student athletes. The University plans to reduce this number to $500,000 by 2016, but that’s clearly not enough. All universities should, at a minimum, adopt a very simple…
This photo collection from the Atlantic, with pictures collected from Occupy demonstrations across the world, really brings home the breadth of the protests.The AAUP’s Council and Collective Bargaining Congress endorsed the Occupy movement last week–a move that, judging from the volume and intensity of e-mail responses, evoked strong feelings among our membership. For many reasons–including…
A brilliant comment by Jon Stewart on academia (begins 5:30 into the clip): http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:400060 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Newt Gingrich: The tenured professors who can flunk you if you are too openly conservative. Jon Stewart: …where the F- did…
In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, Ted Gup calls for the idea of diversity to include political ideas, and he reports mumbling “sorry” to a parent who complains that his conservative son didn’t feel comfortable speaking his ideas in class. I’m annoyed at Gup for citing ACTA’s distorted surveys as proof that conservatives face…
The AAUP recently submitted comments to the Department of Health and Human Services in response to proposed new rule making on institutional review boards, the campus bodies that oversee research on human subjects. In accordance with the AAUP’s 2006 report on this subject, the comments emphasize that IRBs should evaluate risk based on empirical evidence,…
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”–Julius Caesar The star system is one of the worst afflictions to hit academia, and responsible for many of academia’s current problems. Frank Donogue wrote a recent blog on academic stars that got me thinking about the topic. Academia has…
On my College Freedom blog is my essay responding to an earlier article by Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne of the NAS regarding Erskine College firing Bill Crenshaw. I also did a short interview with Bill Crenshaw. Joe Berry also has more COCAL Updates: 1. Santa Fe CC (NM) colleagues at Occupy demonstration [some great…