BY KELLY WILZ The narrative surrounding higher education in Wisconsin is yet again being defined by those who do not work in higher education and unfortunately, as we’ve seen before, this line of attack is incredibly persuasive. “The No Confidence vote isn’t really about President Cross or the Board of Regents. The radical faculty at UW-Madison are rejecting…
This is a guest post by Laura M. Portnoi, the interim associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Education at California State University–Long Beach, and Sylvia S. Bagley, director of teacher leadership in the College of Education at the University of Washington. Portnoi and Bagley’s coedited essay collection (with Val D. Rust) on…
This is now the third time I’ve written about being harassed for being an educator, but clearly the message isn’t getting through, so I will try one more time to reason with those who spend their lives making it their duty to share their opinions regarding my profession, my areas of expertise, and the work…
I should have expected the exploitative nature of news coverage concerning Ebola. I don’t know why I thought the news media would offer an educational experience. Offerings on television and on websites have much in common with Shark Week and the coverage of the O.J. Simpson disaster. Watching a patient being transported from an airport…
An article in the Thursday, July 10, edition of The Wall Street Journal, “Who Is the Sorriest Airline?”, by Scott McCartney, provides beautiful fare for thinking once the amusement factor begins to wear off. An excerpt from a Delta Air Lines letter to one Margery Rothenberg, a passenger who complained about hitting her head while…
The other night I decided to take in some Bergman. I had a few choices, thanks to Amazon’s instant video streaming service. It made it possible for me to avoid my old standby, “The Seventh Seal” (“Det sjunde inseglet”). While it does feature a young, gaunt, and very Nordic looking Max von Sydow, whose hair…
July 3 and I am minding my own business, just checking email before Independence Day, and I have an email from someone named Ashley Minton, Ashley.Minton@cengage.com, with a cc: to someone named Rachael Pigg-Wisner (Wisner) at rachael.wisner@cengage.com. Yes, the sender’s email contains two caps, and the carbon-copied recipient’s email is all lower-case. The email subject…
While the intellectual in me has always been a bit suspicious or patronizing of persons who read their daily devotional or Bible, I must confess that I have turned to literature in my life in what must be a very similar capacity. I have found comfort, reaffirmation, suffering, joy–I have been a participant and spectator…