Australia: 11th hour bid to strike new pay deal for teachers

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ABC: 11th hour bid to strike new pay deal for teachers

The State School Teachers Union is returning to the negotiating table today to try to strike a new pay offer.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes

Manitoba: U of M students disciplined for cyberbullying

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Globe & Mail: U of M students disciplined for cyberbullying

WINNIPEG — Nearly three dozen students at the University of Manitoba have been disciplined for a cyberbullying incident last year on the social networking website Facebook.

University spokesman John Danakis says 34 students have been disciplined for taking part in a Facebook group designed to bully a fellow student in 2007.

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Posted in Students, Technology

Campus Health’s Hidden Costs

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US News & World Report: Campus Health’s Hidden Costs
Students often face unexpected—and unnecessary—fees

College students, already absorbing tuition bills that are rising faster than inflation, are increasingly facing hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in extra and unexpected health insurance costs and medical bills.

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Posted in Campus Life, Students

State universities fear brain drain is setting in

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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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Posted in Uncategorized

Commentary: The worsening money crisis is a smack upside the head of the college classes.

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St Petersburg Times:

Unnatural disaster in our colleges

The worsening money crisis is a smack upside the head of the college classes.

By ERIN BELIEU, Special to the Times
Published January 27, 2008

I’ve lived in Florida for years now – I thought I was well prepared for disaster.

But at this moment there’s a catastrophe descending upon us the likes of which I’ve never seen, doing statewide damage Floridians will pay for dearly in the future. This tempest, started in the eye of Jeb Bush, has picked up wind with Gov. Charlie Crist and is now blowing away not just the frame but the foundation of our state’s higher education system. I don’t know if there are enough D batteries in the world to power us through this mess and what it’s going to cost Florida’s citizens in the long run.

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Posted in Commentary

Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus

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TomDispatch.Com: Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus

Repress U
How to Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky

Free speech zones. Taser guns. Hidden cameras. Data mining. A new security curriculum. Private security contractors… Welcome to the new homeland security campus

From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to “violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism” — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.

Building a homeland-security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission:

1. Target dissidents: As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has increasingly become a target gallery — with student protesters in the crosshairs. The government’s number one target? Peace and justice organizations.

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Posted in Campus Life

Colorado: Millionaire GOP activist, oilman sole contender after 4-month search for CU prez

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The Denver Post: Benson finalist for CU chief

A prominent Republican businessman and education activist who has made millions on oil has been recommended as the sole finalist for the top job at the University of Colorado.

Bruce Benson was the top pick after almost four months of vetting more than 100 names through a 17-member search committee.

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Posted in Administration

Lombardi blocks LSU involvement in environmental pact

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AP: Lombardi blocks LSU involvement in environmental pact

BATON ROUGE (AP) — LSU President John Lombardi has blocked plans by the outgoing chancellor of the Baton Rouge campus to join the college “Presidents Climate Commitment” — an agreement to take various steps to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Chancellor Sean O’Keefe, whose last day is Friday, had planned Wednesday to commit the campus to efforts to become a more eco-friendly campus before stepping down. He said he was disappointed Lombardi chose to block the efforts of the LSU Environmental Conservation Organization that put a lot of hard work into the effort.

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Posted in Administration

Presidential Campaign Heats Up at Professors’ Association

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The Chronicle News Blog: Presidential Campaign Heats Up at Professors’ Association

National attention is on the U.S. presidential campaign, but for higher education another election is looming.

Members of the country’s largest faculty group — the American Association of University Professors — will cast ballots in March to determine the organization’s president for the next two years. The race pits Cary Nelson, an English professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has held the top AAUP job since 2006, against a challenger, Tom Guild.

Mr. Guild is a professor emeritus at the University of Central Oklahoma and a visiting professor of legal studies at Oklahoma City University. He ran against Mr. Nelson in 2004 and lost.

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Posted in Unions

New Brunswick: Custodian strike forces college campuses to cancel classes

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CBC: Custodian strike forces college campuses to cancel classes

The ongoing strike by New Brunswick’s college custodians is beginning to force the province’s campuses to shut down.

New Brunswick Community College campuses in Fredericton and Bathurst cancelled all classes earlier this week. The cancellations are expected to remain in place until custodians return to work.

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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes

Untying knots in headscarf debate

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Turkish Daily News: Untying knots in headscarf debate

Confused by the ‘headscarf debate’ raging in Turkey? For the newly initiated, the Turkish Daily News has prepared a beginners’ manual to help sort out the many complexities animating today’s heated discussions

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Posted in International

Funds Freed for Montclair State Paper

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The New York Times: Funds Freed for Montclair State Paper

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (AP) — Montclair State University’s student government decided on Wednesday to temporarily restore financing that would allow the student newspaper to resume publication, amid criticism that freezing the money a week earlier had muzzled freedom of the press.

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Posted in Free speech, Students

Military hints opposition to end the headscarf ban

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Turkish Daily News: Military hints opposition to end the headscarf ban

Turkey’s top general signaled the military’s opposition to lifting the headscarf ban in universities yesterday, a day after the government and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) jointly introduced a bill to Parliament.

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Posted in International

AAUP Protests Turkish Verdict

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Inside Higher Ed: Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors has written to Turkey’s minister of justice to protest the recent conviction of a political science professor, Atilla Yayla, for saying that the country’s founder was not as progressive as government officials say he was. Nelson called for the conviction to be vacated, and said that punishment of a scholar for expressing views was “inimical to internationally accepted principles of free expression.”

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Posted in Unions

Controversial Chicago State University president stepping down

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Chicago Tribune: Controversial Chicago State University president stepping down

Elnora Daniel, the beleaguered president of Chicago State University, told colleagues Wednesday that she plans to retire, following a year in which her spending practices and leadership repeatedly came under fire.

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Posted in Administration

After Escaping the Imposition of Standardized Measures in 2007, Colleges Begin Worrying About 2008

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The Chronicle: After Escaping the Imposition of Standardized Measures in 2007, Colleges Begin Worrying About 2008

Congress rescued the nation’s colleges and accreditors last year when the Bush administration threatened to impose new rules for measuring academic success. At an annual conference here this week, accreditors heard repeated warnings that the danger has not passed.

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Posted in Accountability

Historical Materialism ­ First North American Conferenc

Posted on January 30, 2008 by | Comments Off on Historical Materialism ­ First North American Conferenc

Historical Materialism ­ First North American Conference

April 24-26, 2008, York University, Toronto

Dear friends,

It is with great excitement that we announce plans for the first ever
North American conference sponsored by Historical Materialism: A
Journal of Critical Marxist Research. While HM’s annual conference in
London has become a major rallying point for hundreds of people working
within the traditions of historical materialism, thus far the journal
has not had a comparable presence on this side of the Atlantic. That is
about to change with this major conference at York University in
Toronto, April 24-26, 2008, sponsored by the Department of Political
Science and Founders College.

We are now busy organizing panels and themes and attending to all the
logistical details involved in hosting a large, dynamic conference of
critical scholars and activists. Over the next few weeks, a conference
website will be set up and announcements will go out concerning details
with respect to agenda, accommodation and travel .

To give you a taste of what we have in store, here is a list of just
some of the more than 100 people who have accepted our invitation to
present papers at the conference:

Rosemary Hennessey, Bertell Ollman, Johanna Brenner, Aijaz Ahmad, Peter
Linebaugh, Joel Kovel, Deborah Cook, Giovanni Arrighi, Leo Panitch,
Crystal Bartolovich, Moishe Postone, Barbara Epstein, Ato Sekyi-Otu,
Bryan Palmer, Anna Agathangelou, Henry Veltmeyer, Isabella Bakker,
Peter McLaren, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greg Albo, Patrick Murray, Nancy
Holmstrom, Bill Carroll, Rick Wolff, Radhika Desai, Stephen Gill,
Alfredo Saad-Filho, John Saul, Christopher Phelps . . .

For further information, feel free to email hmtoronto@yahoo.com. Or
watch for HM mailings in the coming weeks. We hope to see you in
Toronto in April.

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Posted in CFPs

Rich colleges, poor students

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Christian Science Monitor: Rich colleges, poor students

Endowments at colleges and universities have ballooned. Senators rightly press the case for tuition relief.

Last week, two key US senators asked the nation’s 136 wealthiest colleges and universities for information on their tuition hikes, financial aid, and endowments. With those treasure chests rising rapidly, the lawmakers wonder if a college education can be made more affordable.

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Posted in Economics

Promoting Career Flexibility

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Inside Higher Ed: Promoting Career Flexibility

Many professors worry that colleges these days prefer a professional class of administrators to promoting faculty members. In turn, many administrators complain that faculty members — however good at their teaching and research — may lack key skills for more responsibility.

A new program at Simmons College — one of six master’s institutions receiving grants Tuesday to promote “faculty career flexibility” — aims to provide professors with a path to pick up administrative skills, without just adding on to their workloads. The grants are being awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which last year awarded similar grants to research universities.

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Posted in Faculty

New Conflict of Interest Allegations

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Inside Higher Ed: New Conflict of Interest Allegations

Three senior admissions officials of prominent American universities sit on an advisory board of a Japanese company that helps applicants in Japan get into top M.B.A. programs in the United States — including programs at their universities.

The officials confirmed their involvement and that they receive a free annual trip to meetings in Japan for their services, which are boasted about on the Japanese company’s Web site. One of the officials said that there is also pay involved, but declined to say how much. One official said he couldn’t answer questions about his pay. And one official denied being paid except for the free trip to Japan.

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Posted in Ethics