BY HANK REICHMAN As higher education reels from continuing assaults on academic freedom, tenure, shared governance and education itself in states like Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, we now face the possibility that another state’s major flagship institution may soon exist only as a shadow of its former self, the victim of a…
BY HARVEY J. GRAFF In my recent Washington Monthly essay, “The Banality of University Slogans,” I observed that “whether it’s ad campaigns for football season, gauzy reports from the provost, or bombast from the school’s president, higher education abounds with empty rhetoric.” In “Per Aspera ad Astra” Academe Blog contributing editor Hank Reichman shared and…
Yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch included a report that Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, has agreed to become Interim President at West Virginia University. There is a news conference scheduled at West Virginia University this morning of this afternoon, but I am assuming that the Dispatch would not have printed the story without feeling…
This past week I posted about the impression of serious conflicts of interest in the personal relationships and financial dealings of Ohio Governor John Kasich, Ohio State President Emeritus Gordon Gee, and former JobsOhio director and venture capitalist Mark Kvame, as well as others in their circle. At the center of the current controversy is…
The following is excerpted from a Columbus Dispatch article by Charlie Boss and Jennifer Smith Richards. The article is titled “Education Roundup: Retired Gee’s Wit Still Working Overtime,” and it briefly surveys a series of stories from around Ohio. _________________________ E. Gordon Gee might not be in the daily spotlight since retiring as president of…
In my previous post, I remarked on the incongruities John Kasich’s appointment of Gordon Gee to lead a statewide study of how to increase affordability at Ohio’s public universities. I did not anticipate that I would then almost immediately come across an unsettling, related article at Cleveland.com. Written by Henry J. Gomes and Brent Larkin of…
On Monday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Governor Kasich has appointed Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, to “lead a study looking for ways to make college more affordable and relevant for Ohio students.” More specifically, Gee will “spend the next year working with other college presidents, K-12 education leaders, and the business…
In my first two posts in this series (links provided at the end of this post), I commented on the excessive compensation being received by David Petraeus for teaching a course as an adjunct faculty member at a CUNY campus and by Gordon Gee as president of Ohio State. This post provides updates on both…
This is actually a follow-up to two of my previous posts, “The Deepening Caste System in Higher Education” and “The Business Model for Higher Education.” In the first of those two posts, I describe the sweet deal that Richard Herman, the former president of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received after he was forced…
The post to which this is a postscript is available at: https://academeblog.org/2013/07/10/coal-miners-get-the-shaft-again/ Lest anyone think that what Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are doing through Patriot Coal is an anomaly in the Appalachian coal fields, let me draw your attention to the career of Don Blankenship. From 1992 to 2010, Blankenship headed Massey Energy in…