Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Chronicle News Blog: Faculty Strike Ends at Eastern Michigan U. as Both Sides Agree to Hire ‘Fact Finder’

Full-time professors at Eastern Michigan University ended a strike on Wednesday after an overnight bargaining session with university administrators. The session did not resolve the dispute but did result in an agreement to hire an impartial outside “fact finder” to conduct hearings and recommend a compromise, mainly on salary and health-care issues.

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WWMT.com: EMU faculty suspend strike, go back to school

Faculty members at Eastern Michigan University returned to the classroom today while the faculty union and school officials return to the bargaining table.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Oberlin President Resigns Amid Criticism From Faculty and Students

Nancy S. Dye, president of Oberlin College since 1994, has announced that she will step down at the end of the academic year.

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The Ann Arbor News: EMU faculty sticks to pickets

Students at Eastern Michigan University began their second week of classes this morning still not knowing when striking professors would return to the classroom.

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AP: 38-year-old diversity agreement fulfilled

A court-ordered agreement to increase racial diversity at Tennessee colleges and universities may be ending next week, but higher education officials say they will continue the effective programs it required.

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The Chronicle: Brigham Young U. Puts Physicist Involved in Scholars for 9/11 Truth on Leave

Brigham Young University has placed Steven E. Jones, a senior professor of physics, on paid leave because of concerns over his involvement in Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group that says the U.S government permitted and may have even orchestrated the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

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The New York Times: N.Y.U. Teaching Aides End Strike, With Union Unrecognized

In a victory for New York University, its graduate teaching and research assistants have ended the contentious strike that disrupted hundreds of classes last November, without having won recognition of their union.

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Columbus Dispatch: Teachers union avoids strike from own workers

A labor organization that represents Ohio’s teachers averted a strike from its own staff workers’ union last night. The Ohio Professional Staff Union, which represents office workers for the Ohio Education Association, reached a tentative agreement with the OEA, the state’s largest teachers’ union, officials said.

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The Washington Times: Christian college ready to start fresh after Bible battle

A Christian college in Northern Virginia hopes this semester will be a new start, after a dispute last year over the Bible’s place in academics resulted in the departure of nearly one-third of its full-time faculty.

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New York Daily News: Labor Day lesson: Unions still hurt schoolkids

When business is completely happy with the condition of unions, it’s clear things are very bad. Somebody is getting shafted in the name of efficiency and cost-cutting.

Conversely, if unions are happy with the impaired condition of business, it’s doubly clear that something is wrong. Somebody is getting shafted while a self-righteous tone is set and crocodile tears of empathy are shed in honor of the heroic worker, who has scored a victory through the equally heroic efforts of union leaders ever ready to argue and negotiate all through the night.

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Detroit News: Schools map strike strategy

bout 250 school district employees will leave their midtown office desks and head for unfamiliar terrain Tuesday if teachers remain on strike. Some would teach subjects like math and writing and others would answer phones and register students — all to start the first day of school. This is part of the district’s emergency plan, and is aimed at starting school on time — with or without teachers.

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Detroit News: Detroit teachers vow to continue strike next week>

City school teachers will take a break from picketing for the rest of the week but vowed to return to the picket lines Tuesday, the first day of school, if they do not reach an agreement with the district.
About 97 percent of Detroit’s teachers did not report to work Wednesday, the third day of a union strike.

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The Washington Times: The new nutty professors

As state colleges and universities begin the school year, deans and trustees should familiarize themselves with a group called “Scholars for 9/11 Truth.” This group, the new locus for September 11 conspiracy theories, believes that the official history of the terrorist attacks is a hoax. But unlike garden-variety conspiracy clubs, this one happens to count nearly two dozen professors, instructors and other affiliates at state college and universities around the country among its members. Insofar as these people allow their nutty political beliefs to infect their teaching, school officials had better be equipped to make some decisions.

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AP: Gary, Ind., teachers go on strike

Few students showed up for the first day of school Wednesday as hundreds of striking teachers walked picket lines carrying signs that read “No Contract, No Work.”

Negotiators for the Gary Community Schools Corp. and teachers union resumed talks Wednesday night after ending a session late the night before.

School officials had said they expected substitute teachers and administrators to carry out a full day of classes, but it was far short of that in the 16,000-student district.

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Cincinnati Enquirer: UC: German expert plagiarized

A longtime University of Cincinnati librarian could lose his job after an investigating committee determined he plagiarized parts of his German-American history textbook published six years ago.

But Don Heinrich Tolzmann, a local historian and president of the German-American Citizens League of Greater Cincinnati who’s worked at UC for 32 years, denies wrongdoing and said he intends to “vigorously defend” himself against any efforts to terminate his job.

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Miami Herald: Alleged Cuban agent: FBI offered immunity

In testimony in federal court, an FIU professor accused of being a Cuban intelligence agent said he thought he had immunity from prosecution when he spoke to two FBI agents.

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Globe and Mail: B.C. Teachers’ Federation to vote on settlem

The B.C. Teachers’ Federation has set a date to vote on a tentative settlement reached with the province in June.

President Jinny Sims says the 38,000 members will cast ballots on Sept. 8.

The union is recommending teachers accept the deal, which gives them a 16-per-cent pay increase over five years and an enhanced signing bonus. CP

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The Chronicle: Professor Accuses University of Discriminating Against Him Because of His War Injuries

A tenured professor of criminal justice at Saint Xavier University who was injured while serving as a military reservist in Iraq says the Chicago institution has failed to accommodate his injuries and is now trying to push him out of his job.

Christopher C. Cooper, an associate professor of law in Saint Xavier’s department of sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice, was called to active duty as a reservist with the National Guard in October of 2003. While working as an infantry sergeant in Iraq, Mr. Cooper says, he was thrown from a Humvee and sustained injuries that left him with viral infections, dangerously low blood pressure, and a frequent need to urinate.

Since returning from Iraq in October of 2004, Mr. Cooper, who is 43, says he has had to interrupt his classroom teaching to go to the bathroom and to monitor his blood pressure. He has also had to cancel classes for hospital visits and because “sometimes my glands swell and I get blisters on my tongue and I can’t speak.”

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MSNBC/Newsweek: 25 New Ivies

You could call it a classic case of supply meeting demand. A generation ago, elite schools were a clearly defined group: the eight schools in the Ivy League, along with such academic powerhouses as Stanford, the University of Chicago, MIT and Caltech. Smaller liberal-arts colleges—like Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Swarthmore and Wesleyan—were the destinations of choice for top students who preferred a more intimate campus. But in the past few decades, the number of college-bound students has skyrocketed, and so has the number of world-class schools. The demand for an excellent education has created an ever-expanding supply of big and small campuses that provide great academics and first-rate faculties.

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Inside Higher Ed: Blackboard: Bully or Misunderstood?

Al Gore has yet to live down reports that he claimed to have invented the Internet. Now Blackboard is facing criticism from those who say the giant of the course management industry claims to have invented chat rooms. (If you are wondering, Blackboard says it never made such a claim.)

On Thursday, leading advocates for open source systems of course management announced that they were linking up with the Software Freedom Law Center to try to prepare legal and other defenses for attacks they fear will be coming from Blackboard.

“The recent announcement by Blackboard that it is attempting to assert patent rights over simple and longstanding online technologies as applied to the area of course management systems and e-learning technologies, and its subsequent litigation against a smaller commercial competitor constitutes a threat to the effective and open development of software for higher education and the values underlying such open activities,” said the announcement from the Sakai Foundation, which helps dozens of colleges and universities run open source course management systems.

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