Category Archives: Uncategorized

Dallas Morning News: SMU expected to announce Bush presidential library agreement Friday

Southern Methodist University and the George W. Bush Library Foundation are expected to announce an agreement today to bring the presidential library, museum and policy institute to campus.

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UPI: Woman shoots 2, then self on La. campus

Three students died at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge Friday, where police said a woman shot two other females then turned the gun on herself.

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St Petersburg Times: State universities fear brain drain is setting in

Associate history professor Matt Childs needs to spend another four to six months in Cuba to finish his second book on the country’s slave history, but Florida’s 2-year-old ban on research travel to the communist country prevents him from going.

He has received just one merit raise in his six years at Florida State University. He’s married with one toddler, and another baby and endless bills on the way.

So when the University of South Carolina recently came calling, Childs answered.

Starting in the fall, he will teach and pursue his Cuba research from USC’s Columbia campus.

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The Tyee: At Risk: BC’s Vital Foreign Student Industry

They spend $500 million a year here. Will they still?

Most of us don’t realize it, but one of B.C.’s most important exports is knowledge.

We don’t load it onto freighters or trucks. We load it into the heads of about 28,000 foreign students every year, who then take it back home to China or Korea or the U.S. Doing so is making us a fortune.

Our export industries are alarmed by the rise of the Canadian dollar. God knows what’s going to happen to the Vancouver film business, now that its members have to be paid in loonies costing more than U.S. greenbacks. American tourists, already discouraged by the need for a passport if they want to get back into the U.S., are likely to stay south of the border.

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From Creativity/Machine: on distributed presence (and blogrolls)

One of the things I find most interesting about the current proliferation and extensive uptake of various ’social media’ technologies, from RSS readers, to del.icio.us, facebook and twitter as well as weblogs themselves, is the decentralising effect that these technologies are having the ‘online presence’ of individuals, at the same time as these technologies are being adopted at scale. Put simply, there are more of us online, in more places. But is more really more?

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Atlanta Journal Constitution: Go Dawgs — but, please, don’t flush

Despite the drought, the laws of hydraulics will still apply at Saturday’s University of Georgia homecoming game: People will drink. And people will go.

Attendants with jobs you don’t get by knowing somebody high in the alumni association will be standing by in stadium restrooms to flush toilets and urinals for a steady stream of 93,000 people, many of whom have spent hours doing their best not to be thirsty.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Dixie’ Debate Endangers Utah College’s Merger Plan

Local outcry over a proposed name change could derail a plan to merge Dixie State College of Utah into the University of Utah system, the St. George, Utah, Spectrum reported.

The University of Utah’s Board of Trustees has told Dixie State that it must change its name to the University of Utah, St. George, for the merger to proceed.

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New edition of JCEPS now out

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies

www.jceps.com

ISSN 1740-2743

An e-journal published by The Institute for Education Policy Studies

The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies is published by IEPS, the Institute for Education Policy Studies, an independent Radical Left/ Socialist/ Marxist institute for developing analysis of education policy. It is at www.ieps.org.uk The Journal JCEPS seeks to develop Marxist analysis of policy, theory, ideology and policy development.

The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies seeks and publishes articles that critique global, national, neo-liberal, neo-conservative, New Labour, Third Way, and postmodernist analyses and policy, together with articles that attempt to report on, analyse and develop socialist/Marxist transformative policy for schooling and education from a number of Radical Left perspectives, including Freirean perspectives. JCEPS also addresses issues of Social Class, ‘Race’, Gender and Capital/ism; Critical Pedagogy; New Public Managerialism and Academic / non-Academic labour, and Empowerment/ Disempowerment. The journal therefore welcomes articles from academics and activists throughout the globe. It is a refereed / peer juried international journal.

Contact:

dave.hill@northampton.ac.uk and dave.hill35@btopenworld.com

Volume 5, Number 2:
November 2007

Terry Wrigley (University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK)
Rethinking Education in an Era of Globalisation

Dave Hill (University of Northampton, England, UK) and Simon Boxley (University of Winchester, England, UK)
Critical Teacher Education for Economic, Environmental and Social Justice: an Ecosocialist Manifesto

Richard Hatcher(University of Central England, Birmingham, England, UK)
‘Yes, but how do we get there?’ Alternative visions and the problem of strategy

Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale (University of Windsor, Canada), Ghada Chehade (McGill University, Montreal, Canada), Richard Kahn (University of North Dakota, USA), Clayton Pierce (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) and Sheila L. Macrine (Montclair State University, NJ, USA)
Review Symposium:Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Toward a new Humanism by Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo

Rich Gibson (San Diego State University, California, USA), Greg Queen (High School teacher, in Warren, Michigan, USA), E. Wayne Ross (University of British Colombia, Vancouver, Canada) and Kevin Vinson (University of Arizona, Texas, USA).
“I Participate, You Participate, We Participate … They Profit,”
Notes on Revolutionary Educational Activism to Transcend Capital: The Rouge Forum

Wayne Au (California State University, Fullerton, USA)
Epistemology of the Oppressed: The Dialectics of Paulo Freire’s Theory of Knowledge

Bill Templer (University of Malaya, Malaysia)
Educational Geopolitics and the ‘Settler University’ in Ariel

Jill Pinkney Pastrana (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA)
Subtle Tortures of the Neo-liberal Age: Teachers, Students, and the Political Economy of Schooling in Chile

Amy Salmon (British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
Dis/Abling States, Dis/Abling Citizenship: Young Aboriginal Mothers and the Medicalization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Paul Carr (Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA)
Experiencing Democracy Through Neoliberalism: The Role of Social Justice in Democratic Education

Nikos M. Georgiadis (1st Experimental Lyceum of Athens, Greece)
Educational Reforms in Greece (1959 – 1997) and Human Capital Theory

Anastasios Liambas (Department of Primary Education, Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Christos Tourtouras (Researcher and primary school teacher in Greece) and Ioannis Kaskaris (Primary school teacher in Greece)
Socio-cultural appraisals on the Greek non-compulsory secondary education: An analysis on the education provided for the immigrant foreign and the repatriated pupils

David Greene (NYC Department of Education, New York, USA)
Gatekeepers: The Role of Adult Education Practitioners and Programs in Social Control

Park, Hyu-Yong (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA)
Emerging Consumerism and the Accelerated ‘Education Divide’: The Case of Specialized High Schools in South Korea

Yasemin Esen (University of Ankara, Turkey)
Sexism in School Textbooks Prepared under Education Reform in Turkey

Steven Best (University of Texas, El Paso, USA) Peter McLaren (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) and Anthony J. Nocella, II (Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, SUNY, Cortland, NY, USA)
Revolutionary Peacemaking: Using a Critical Pedagogy Approach for Peacemaking with “Terrorists”

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The Chronicle: Full-Time Professors Report High Levels of Job Satisfaction, Survey Finds

Full-time faculty members at four-year colleges are happier with their jobs than most American workers, according to a new survey by the pension giant TIAA-CREF.

The company polled 300 full-time faculty members, who had each been employed for three or more years at a single four-year institution, about their views on their careers, work-life balance, and retirement expectations.

Inside Higher Ed: A Satisfied Full-Time Faculty

Many administrators complain about the many complaints of their faculty members, but it turns out that most professors (at least full timers at four-year colleges) are pretty happy with their jobs.

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New York Sun: Governor To Bet Billions on SUNY
Colleges Eyed for Role in High Schools

Envisioning a dramatically greater role for universities and colleges in the remedial education of secondary students, the Spitzer administration is planning to pump billions of additional dollars into the State University of New York and the rest of New York’s higher education system, sources said.

A higher education commission appointed by Governor Spitzer in May is discussing a concept called “education empowerment zones,” which would provide financial incentives for colleges and universities to collaborate with public high schools and middle schools.

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News Advance: Randolph College announces academic cuts

Randolph College sophomore Lucy Hamer was planning to major in Russian studies, but after an announcement Thursday, she’s not sure if she can anymore.

The financially struggling school announced Thursday that it will eliminate five academic departments, which will include nine of the college’s 74 full-time faculty positions by the end of the 2008-09 school year.

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The Chronicle: Suspected Arsonist Is Killed Near Cal State-San Bernardino as Campus Closures Continue

Police officers from California State University at San Bernardino and local agencies shot and killed a suspected arsonist near the campus on Tuesday night, law-enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

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AP: Scientist Apologizes for Hurtful Remarks

James Watson, the 79-year-old scientific icon made famous by his work in DNA, has set off an international furor with comments to a London newspaper about intelligence levels among blacks.

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AllAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Government Backs Down On Wage Freeze But ZCTU Strike to Go Ahead

State media reports on Sunday said Labour Minister Nicholas Goche would announce amendments to the two-week old legislation, allowing employers to raise wages for employees through collective bargaining. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) called for a job boycott last week to protest a presidential decree banning employers from raising workers wages.

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AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom and Outside Speakers (2007)

The statement that follows, prepared by a subcommittee of the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, was approved for publication as AAUP policy by Committee A in July 2007.

Incidents in which colleges and universities have rescinded invitations issued to outside speakers have multiplied in recent years. Because academic freedom requires the liberty to learn as well as to teach, colleges and universities should respect the prerogatives of campus organizations to select outside speakers whom they wish to hear. The AAUP articulated this principle in 1967 in its Fifty-third Annual Meeting, when it affirmed “its belief that the freedom to hear is an essential condition of a university community and an inseparable part of academic freedom,” and that “the right to examine issues and seek truth is prejudiced to the extent that the university is open to some but not to others whom members of the university also judge desirable to hear.”

This principle has come under growing pressure. Citing an inability to guarantee the safety of outside speakers, or the lack of balance represented by the invitation of a college or university group, or the danger that a group’s invitation might violate Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, college and university administrators have displayed an increasing tendency to cancel or to withdraw funding for otherwise legitimate invitations to non-campus speakers. Committee A notes with concern that these reasons for canceling outside speakers are subject to serious abuse, and that their proper application should be limited to very narrow circumstances that only rarely obtain. Applied promiscuously, these reasons undermine the right of campus groups to hear outside speakers and thus contradict the basic educational mission of colleges and universities.

It is of course the responsibility of a college or university to guarantee the safety of invited speakers, and administrators ought to make every effort to ensure conditions of security in which outside speakers have an opportunity to express their views. The university is no place for a heckler’s veto. In 1983, when unruly individuals on various campuses prevented United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick from addressing university audiences, Committee A reaffirmed “its expectation that all members of the academic community will respect the right of others to listen to those who have been invited to speak on campus and will indicate disagreement not by disruptive action designed to silence the speaker but by reasoned debate and discussion as befits academic freedom in a community of higher learning.” We have always been clear that colleges and universities bear the obligation to ensure conditions of peaceful discussion, which at times can be quite onerous. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances can strong evidence of imminent danger justify rescinding an invitation to an outside speaker.

Colleges and universities have also withdrawn invitations to outside speakers on the ground that such invitations reflect a lack of balance. This objection misunderstands the meaning of balance within a university setting. In the context of teaching, balance refers to the obligation of instructors to convey to students the state of knowledge, as warranted by a professional community of inquirers, in the field of learning to which a given course is devoted. There is no obligation to present ideas about “intelligent design” in a biology course, for example, because those ideas have no standing in the professional community of biologists. If invitations to outside speakers are extended within the context of teaching, they should be consistent with the obligations of professionalism. They should not be subject to an additional standard of balance that does not reflect professional standards.

Most invitations to outside speakers do not concern professional pedagogy of this kind, but reflect instead the interests of specific campus groups that are authorized by colleges and universities to learn by pursuing their own particular extracurricular activities. Invitations of this kind may raise a question about the overall contours of a university’s extracurricular programming, but they ought not to be evaluated on an invitation-by-invitation basis. The spectrum of extracurricular activities sponsored by a college or university should be evaluated on the basis of its educational justifiability, rather than on the basis of a mechanical standard of balance that does not reflect educational objectives. So long as the range of a university’s extracurricular programming is educationally justifiable, the specific invitations of particular groups should not be vetoed by university administrators because these invitations are said to lack balance. Campus groups should not be prevented from pursuing the very interests that they have been created to explore.

University administrators have also rescinded invitations to outside speakers who are politically controversial on the ground that during an election such invitations would violate the prohibition of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which provides that a charitable organization will qualify for a tax exemption only if it “does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Before the 2004 presidential election, some institutions withdrew or objected to invitations to speakers identified with partisan political positions, including Michael Moore, a filmmaker critical of the Bush administration. In some cases, the initial invitations were issued by student organizations; in other cases, they were by members of a faculty body or as part of an invited speaker series.

Committee A is concerned that overly restrictive interpretations of Section 501(c)(3) have become an excuse for preventing campus groups from inviting politically controversial speakers. As was stated by the AAUP’s Fifty-second Annual Meeting, “the right to access to speakers on campus does not in its exercise imply in advance either agreement or disagreement with what may be said, or approval or disapproval of the speakers as individuals.” The idea that a university “participates” or “intervenes” in a political campaign by providing a forum to hear speakers who have something to communicate about issues of relevance to the campaign is thus fundamentally misplaced. The idea misconceives the role and responsibility of a university, which is not to endorse candidates but to discuss issues of relevance to society.

The essentially educational role of a university has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, which has held that activities which might otherwise constitute prohibited political activities are to be understood, in the context of a college or university, as furthering the institution’s educational mission. For this reason, a course in political campaign methods that requires students to participate in political campaigns of candidates of their choice does not constitute participation in a political campaign by the institution.1

Similarly, providing office space, financial support, and a faculty advisor for a campus newspaper that publishes students’ editorial opinions on political matters does not constitute an attempt by the university to participate in political campaigns on behalf of candidates for public office.2 Instead, the Internal Revenue Service has viewed these types of activities as serving the university’s tax-exempt educational purposes.

As part of their educational mission, colleges and universities provide a forum for a wide variety of speakers. There can be no more appropriate site for the discussion of controversial ideas and issues than a college or university campus. Candidates for public office may speak on campus, as may their supporters or opponents, so long as the institution does not administer its speakers program in a manner that constitutes intervention in a campaign. Invitations made to outside speakers by students or faculty do not imply approval or endorsement by the institution of the views expressed by the speaker. Consistent with the prohibition on political activities, colleges and universities can specify that no member of the academic community may speak for or act on behalf of the college or university in a political campaign. Institutions may also clearly affirm that sponsorship of a speaker or a forum does not constitute endorsement of the views expressed.
Endnotes

1. Revenue Ruling 72-512, 1972-2 Cumulative Bulletin 246. Back to text

2. Revenue Ruling 72-513, 1972-2 Cumulative Bulletin 246. Back to text

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Radio New Zealand: Union to advise teachers if national strike still on

The Post Primary Teachers Association will tell secondary teachers on Monday whether a national strike on Wednesday is to go ahead.

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Washington Post: U-Md. Responds to Possible Hate Crime

University of Maryland administrators moved quickly over the weekend to assure students and other members of the community that they were taking the possibility of a campus hate crime with the utmost seriousness.

“The University of Maryland will not tolerate discrimination, harassment or acts of hate,” university President C. D. Mote Jr. wrote Saturday in a letter posted on the university’s Web site.

Mote was responding to reports of a noose found hanging in a tree near a building that houses several African American campus organizations.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Bomb Threats and Random Stabbing Open Academic Year on 3 Campuses

The opening of the academic year greeted students on at least three campuses yesterday with scary episodes not likely to endear the universities to their parents.

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Journal-Sentinel: It’s time for UW faculty to gain union rights

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Unfortunately, in the University of Wisconsin System, we have reached critical mass on the insanity meter.

Faculty begin each academic year believing that shared governance means we have a say in what happens on campus. (It doesn’t.) The Republicans in the Legislature begin each biennium by casting their first stones at UW System faculty and academic staff. When will faculty members wise up and realize that collective bargaining will actually give us a say in what goes on and will remove the bull’s-eye painted on our backsides?

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Los Angeles Times: Iran to televise Americans’ confessions

Iran’s state-controlled television aired a short clip Monday touting an upcoming news program that it says will show taped confessions by two Iranian Americans jailed this year on charges of espionage.

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