COCAL Updates
By Joe Berry From the Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor 1. An amazing story from Missouri (Missouri Southern State U) of undergrads hired to grade speeches which make up large portion of final course grades.
Veterans and the 90/10 Rule at For-Profits
[This post has been updated on 11/7/2011. The US Senate has said that for-profit colleges took in $626 million through the GI Bill, not $1 billion as they had initially reported] In the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of press about for-profit colleges and federal student aid. The big news is that the…
More False Smears and Attacks on Academic Freedom at Columbia
“Anti-Jewish Bias Claim at Columbia,” declares the headline at the National Review’s Phi Beta Cons blog. The only problem is that it’s utterly false. In January, Barnard Professor Rachel McDermott is alleged to have advised a student not to take Columbia professor Joseph Massad’s course on the Arab world because “he’s very anti-Israel,” and “You’ll…
The AAUP Supports Occupy Wall Street
The AAUP has issued this statement in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement: The Collective Bargaining Congress and national Council of the American Association of University Professors stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Over the last several years, we have watched as those at the very top have prospered while the…
An Honors Program Turns 25
This weekend, I attended the 25th Anniversary celebration for the Campus Honors Program (CHP) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It led me to think about something I’ve contemplated ever since I entered the Campus Honors Program in 1987: what is the justification for an honors program? In an era of budget cuts, why…
COCAL Updates
By Joe Berry Updates from COCAL (Chicago Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor). 1. New edition of the contingent faculty bibliography available. 2. Bob Samuels (Pres of U of CA -AFT Council of locals in Univ of CA, which represents all the NTT faculty at UC) reports on his visit to the White House 3. Interesting…
Accuracy in Academia Responds to My Critique
Malcolm Kline, executive director of Accuracy in Academia, has responded to my critique yesterday of his essay listing the professors who provide “100 arguments against tenure.” Kline argues that abolishing tenure “is not tantamount to firing.” That’s absolutely true. But Kline is not making a broad argument against the existence of tenure (and there are…
Call for Proposals for 2012 AAUP Conference
The AAUP has posted a call for proposals for its Annual Conference on Higher Education, which will be held in Washington, DC, June 13 –17, 2012 at the Mayflower Renaissance: Do you have something to say about current challenges to academic freedom? Online education? Pedagogical techniques that really work? Strategies for improving working conditions or…
The Thought Police at Accuracy in Academia
Back in the 1980s, Reed Irvine’s right-wing group Accuracy in Academia (AIA) caused controversy by recruiting students to spy on left-wing professors. With the growth of the internet, AIA can do the spying online, but its attacks on academic freedom continue to this day. One of the most disturbing features on the AIA website is…
Campus Equity Week
Every two years, faculty and allies across the United States and Canada take part in Campus Equity Week, a week of events calling attention to the prevalence and working conditions of faculty in contingent appointments. This year’s Campus Equity Week will be held from October 24 to 30. (In Canada and some US states, it…