Photo of Woodburn Hall at West Virginia University.

Is There Still Time for WVU?

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…

Photo of Woodburn Hall at West Virginia University.

WVU Program Cuts Disenfranchise West Virginians

BY APARAJITA DE As the sixth poorest state in the nation, West Virginia has always identified a large part of its working-class (primarily) white population as coal miners. With the steady downgrading of coal and related industries, the working class’s only way out of poverty and into alternative livelihoods seemed to be housed in the…

Can a President Emeritus Take a Leave of Absence?

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…