In 2010, Wesleyan University began offering courses and holding events in its new College of the Environment, a new interdisciplinary school and associated think tank. Each school year, the College has a broad theme (the first three were stress and vulnerability, water, and environmental justice) and approaches that subject from a variety of viewpoints. In…
Margaret Bellafiore is an artist and a professor of art at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. She has never served in the military, but over the last few years, she noticed that some of her students were creating art that included militarized imagery. The students were veterans who had returned home and gone to college,…
More than half of all Americans have experienced some form of chronic illness. In a new article for Academe, Stephanie A. Goodwin and Susanne Morgan look at how chronic illnesses affect faculty members. Because such illnesses can have no symptoms visible to others, many faculty members can be unaware that some of their colleagues have…
North Carolina multimillionaire Arthur Pope has been using his wealth to influence the state’s politics and policy for years. In the May-June issue of Academe, Hassan Melehy, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, explains how Pope uses his wealth to fund foundations which push for more and more conservative influence over education. On the one hand,…
As we all know, universities around the country are in financial trouble. Many states have been cutting funding to their public universities, forcing the schools to do more with less. So it’s understandable that administrators would be on the lookout for new sources of funding—including wealthy donors. In “Fine Print, Restrictive Grants, and Academic Freedom,”…
How much influence should wealthy donors be able to buy? Kevin Kumashiro looks at the question is “When Billionaires Become Educational Experts,” in the May-June issue of Academe. Kumashiro examines the history of two groups, the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Business Roundtable, which have had outsized influence in education policy from their founding in the…
When does philanthropy cross the line? That’s the question we are looking at in the newest issue of Academe, now posted online. Over the next few days, I’ll be highlighting a few of the feature articles, but before I do, I wanted to talk about the issue as a whole, because I think it’s a particularly good…
I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Academe Blog. Just like our sister publication, Academe magazine, this blog will explore a wide range of topics in higher education—academic freedom, governance of colleges and universities, working conditions of contingent faculty and graduate employees, collective bargaining, faculty workplace issues, work-family balance, funding, and legislation affecting higher…