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…
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.
[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…
“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 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…
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…
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…
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…