Category Archives: Commentary

France shifts from striking to marching

International Herald Tribune: France shifts from striking to marching

PARIS: French strikes aren’t what they used to be.

In December 1995 and November 2007, unions brought all transportation to a standstill across the country for more than a week. Thursday, in a one-day strike by the same eight unions, metros in Paris and Marseille ran normally, most Air France-KLM Group flights took off on time, and fewer people struck at French schools and government offices than in previous actions.

The Roar of the Crowd; Sports fans’ primal behavior

The Chronicle Review: The Roar of the Crowd; Sports fans’ primal behavior

Commentary

Peter A. Facione: A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges

By DAVID P. BARASH

Marx was wrong: The opiate of the masses isn’t religion, but spectator sports. What else explains the astounding fact that millions of seemingly intelligent human beings feel that the athletic exertions of total strangers are somehow consequential for themselves? The real question we should be asking during the madness surrounding this month’s collegiate basketball championship season is not who will win, but why anyone cares.

Neoliberalism and Higher Education

The New York Times: Neoliberalism and Higher Education

By Stanley Fish

I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition.

Reject student evaluation of faculty

Houston Chronicle: Reject student evaluation of faculty
By ROBERT ZARETSKY

“Now what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life… Stick to Facts, sir!”

Thomas Gradgrind, 

Hard Times

My thoughts drifted the other day to the opening passage from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. The occasion was a meeting of fellow professors at the University of Houston, gathered to discuss a modest proposal from the board of regents. In the interest of greater efficiency, the regents wanted professors to post on the Web a variety of statistics: how much they earn, how many A’s and B’s they give, how many students they teach, and how much these same students earn once they graduate.

It is endearing that Texas — home to the Bush Administration, which cooked the books on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Sir Allen Stanford, who is alleged to have cooked the books of his financial empire — is saddling up to catch allegedly AWOL academics guilty of earning in the high two figures. Yet this is the goal of Jeff Sandefer, a board member of the Texas Public Policy Center, a private think tank in Austin devoted to free market principles. (Among the Center’s senior policy fellows are Arthur Laffer, whose theories have justified cutting marginal tax rates of the nation’s wealthiest citizens, and Grover Norquist, director of Americans for Tax Reform, who recently compared the estate tax to the Holocaust.)

Professors’ Freedoms Under Assault in the Courts

The Chronicle: Professors’ Freedoms Under Assault in the Courts

By PETER SCHMIDT

Balance of Power is a series examining new challenges to faculty influence.

Kevin J. Renken learned the limits of his academic freedom the hard way.

As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mr. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him and several colleagues. When the university subsequently reduced his pay and returned the grant, he sued, alleging illegal retaliation.

Commentary on York U strike by Globe and Mail

Globe and Mail:

The labour party

Howard Hampton, the outgoing Leader of Ontario’s New Democratic Party, has some nerve calling for compensation for York University students who have seen their school year savaged by a strike by 3,500 teaching assistants and contract faculty. It is the NDP that has denied the Ontario government unanimous consent for back-to-work legislation, prolonging a dispute that is in its 12th week and aggravating the hardship facing 50,000 students. Will the Ontario NDP contribute toward any compensation?

These students deserve compensation

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

After a day spent perusing the various websites, pro and con, devoted to the still-ongoing York University strike and the anonymous meanness it has everywhere spawned, finally, there comes a lovely bit of clarity.

Unsurprisingly, it comes from neither the university nor the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, which represents the 3,340 striking contract faculty and teaching, graduate and research assistants. Neither side has distinguished itself during the now 83-day-long strike except by putting its own respective interests ahead of those of 50,000-plus students, and that unhappy conduct continues unabated.

Balancing the right to strike with the right to learn

MURRAY CAMPBELL

There is one question that hangs over the messy, long-running labour dispute at York University: Where is the adult supervision?

The 12-week strike by contract faculty and teaching assistants has unfolded like a pyjama party in the basement when the parents have gone out and the babysitter has fallen asleep. The kids really do intend to turn off the television and head to bed but they don’t get around to it.

The Adjunct’s Mandate

Inside Higher Ed: The Adjuncts’ Mandate

By Gregory Zobel

The recent reports on academic labor by the American Federation of Teachers and Modern Language Association are great news. The great news is not the information the reports present. They offer little that is new or heartening. Instead, they echo what most adjuncts and many academic labor activists already know: Exploitation of contingent academic laborers is growing in scale. Activists, organizers, and administrators can and will jockey over exact percentages in pay difference, whether or not graduate student labor counts as just-in-time labor, and the precise impact adjunct exploitation has upon pay rates, tenure, and the quality of learning at colleges and universities. Exact percentages are important, but they are not vital. Most essential — the larger picture — is that more adjuncts are being hired, exploited, and abused at more community colleges and universities around the United States than ever before. The great news is the presence, timing, and potential application of these reports.

Opinion: Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

The Chronicle News Blog: Opinion: Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

By Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.

Kentucky: Loserville 2008

LEO Weekly: Loserville 2008

Remembering the year that should’ve been better

A STAFF REPORT

Welcome to our first Loserville Awards. Here you’ll find 50 ruminations on the past year of screw-ups, hack-jobs, short-fallers and people who’ve generally blown their public trust — and, incidentally, entered our lives in a sort of sideways, wholly unpleasant way. We criticize because we care, so if you find yourself on this list, the message to take away is simple: Do better.

Robert Felner and Thomas Schroeder

We weren’t sure how far the year’s most cartoonish villains could go; at the very least, former U of L Education Dean Robert Felner’s alleged embezzlement/homoerotic/tirades at students and co-workers/creepily beardless perp-walk fiasco certainly upped the ante for scandals in the ’Ville. Felner was indicted in October on 10 counts of mail fraud, money-laundering conspiracy and income-tax evasion. Schroeder — Felner’s colleague and friend — was also charged in the conspiracy that included more than $2 million in grants fraudulently obtained though U of L. Thanks for the memories, Bob. Enjoy federal prison.

Penance: Reimbursement to students of all funds spent on classes featuring this dude.

U of L administration and public relations office

1. Robert Felner and how not to address a scandal with a public that is capable of reading/writing/speaking.

2. Patrick Henry Hughes and how not to treat a national icon bitter about an overzealous athletic department trying to control the pep band without making accommodations for Hughes and his father, who directs his wheelchair in band formations.

3. Mandatory Meal Plan and how not to treat students who’ve endured a decade of substantial tuition increases.

Penance: Go Cats?

An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom

New York Times: An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom

More than a few times in these columns I have tried to deflate the balloon of academic freedom by arguing that it was not an absolute right or a hallowed principle, but a practical and limited response to the particular nature of intellectual work.

Now, in a new book — “For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom,” to be published in 2009 — two distinguished scholars of constitutional law, Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post, study the history and present shape of the concept and come to conclusions that support and deepen what I have been saying in these columns and elsewhere.

News from an alternative universe…In Alternative Universe: Iraq War Ends — Bush Indicted For Treason

The Chronicle: In Alternative Universe: Iraq War Ends — Bush Indicted For Treason

The Yes Men media pranksters have claimed responsibility for a million-copy spoof edition of The New York Times handed out yesterday on Manhattan streets.

Public Universities at Risk Abandoning Their Mission

The Chronicle: Public Universities at Risk Abandoning Their Mission

By GENE R. NICHOL

I am an admirer of Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class, a new book by Christopher Newfield, who writes in this issue of The Chronicle about how certain myths exacerbate the financial plight of those institutions. Newfield, a professor of English at the University of California…

Adjuncts’ academic freedom snuffed out

St. Petersburg Times: Adjuncts’ academic freedom snuffed out

By Bill Maxwell, Times Columnist

On four different occasions during my teaching career, I was an adjunct professor — twice at major universities, twice at community colleges. Back then, adjuncts made up about 40 percent of the nation’s college professors. Now, they account for a whopping 70 percent.

Although the use of adjuncts has increased, one thing remains the same: Adjuncts are still treated like stepchildren and orphans on their campuses. Most adjuncts can accept the low pay because they need the job. Most can accept the high number of students they are assigned, and most can accept the lack of adequate office space and other amenities the tenured professors take for granted.

Want Tenure? Sign on the Dotted Line

The Chronicle: Want Tenure? Sign on the Dotted Line

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg: Want Tenure? Sign on the Dotted Line

Something is wrong with tenure, and we need to make it right. Abolishing it altogether is not politically or culturally feasible, or even likely. Any such attempt would set the many academic constituencies against all the rest simultaneously and, like the famous circular firing squad, leave everyone at least grievously injured and possibly some higher-education institutions dead.

Don’t Be Kind to Adjuncts

The Chronicle: Don’t Be Kind to Adjuncts

By STEVE STREET

This year, don’t be kind to adjuncts. Don’t be kind to the 68 percent of appointments in higher education that are now off the tenure track, to the 46 percent of faculty members nationwide who serve part time. Don’t be kind unless you can also put equity for us — proportional pay, benefits, security, and opportunities for professional development and advancement — front and center in department meetings, faculty senates, budget allocations, and even mission statements. Factor equity into your visionary fiveand 10-year plans. If even presidential tickets have begun to reflect the actual population, can academics continue to avoid the realities of ours?

Ohio: Your turn: Data point to unionization as ‘move backward’ for OU

The Post: Your turn: Data point to unionization as ‘move backward’ for OU

Ohio University Faculty Senate is contemplating a resolution for collective bargaining. Pro-union faculty suggest collective bargaining will benefit faculty long-term. Unfortunately, data do not support this argument. Institutional Research Salary Study data demonstrate that 5-year cumulative salary increases at non-union schools are higher than union schools for all faculty ranks: Professors, 16 percent non-union versus 11 percent union; Associate Professors 13 percent union versus 10 percent union; Assistant Professors, 16 percent non-union versus 14 percent union. Faculty salary increases (%) at Ohio University often equal or exceed the salary increases (%) at other non-union universities in Ohio.

Ontario: U Windsor strike leaves students in limbo

The Chatham Daily News: Students left in limbo

University of Windsor president Alan Wildeman pulled the sympathy rug out from underneath striking faculty members this week, by releasing to the media financial details of the university’s latest offer.

Administration said Tuesday the salary of a professor would rise to $150,046 from $132,493 over three years if the faculty had taken the final offer, a composite 14-percent increase.

Stop Trying To Get Tenure and Start Trying To Enjoy Yourself

Inside Higher Ed: Stop Trying To Get Tenure and Start Trying To Enjoy Yourself

By Gary W. Lewandowski Jr.

Congratulations! You have a tenure-track position. Now what? Seriously, how are you going to make the transition from tenure-track to tenured? What is the best way to spend your time? How much emphasis should you put on teaching? What are the scholarship expectations? Where should you publish? Do you need to be first author? Should you continue working with your graduate advisor? Should you stick to safe avenues of inquiry or take chances with new ideas? How many committees should you sit on? How many campus initiatives should you join? What, if anything, can you turn down? What is the relative value of teaching, scholarship, and service?

The Worst Academic Careers — Worldwide

Inside Higher Ed: The Worst Academic Careers — Worldwide

By Philip G. Altbach and Christine Musselin

Successful universities and academic systems require career structures for the academic profession that permit a stable academic career, encourage the “best and brightest” to join the profession, reward the most productive for their work, and weed out those who are unsuited for academic work. We have been struck by the dysfunctional nature of career structures in many countries — with disturbing negative trends — and would, only with a small sense of irony, suggest a ranking for career structures that guarantee to fail to build a productive academic profession. Our serious point is this: Without a career structure that attracts quality, rewards productivity, and permits stability, universities will fail in their mission of high-quality teaching, innovative research, and building a “world-class” reputation.

The myth of the digital generation gap

The Chronicle Review: Generational Myth

Not all young people are tech-savvy

By SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN

Consider all the pundits, professors, and pop critics who have wrung their hands over the inadequacies of the so-called digital generation of young people filling our colleges and jobs. Then consider those commentators who celebrate the creative brilliance of digitally adept youth. To them all, I want to ask: Whom are you talking about? There is no such thing as a “digital generation.”