The Chronicle: Hunger Strikes Over Tenure Denials Can Succeed and Fail Simultaneously, Says Veteran of Fast From the Past
As a group, prisoners wage hunger strikes more than anyone else, but sometimes it seems professors are not too far behind them.
In a surprising number of cases over the past several years, academics who found themselves on the wrong side of a tenure decision have tried to reverse their fate through public starvation.
Some starve themselves. Others have students starve with, or for, them. One professor in 2000 had his wife do the starving. Occasionally the tactics have worked. Usually they have not. Some professors walk away without winning tenure but then say that was never really the point anyway.
The second greatest occupational hazard of a hunger striker — whose occupation, after all, is a hazard — is the danger of drawing public resentment (attention monger!) rather than public sympathy (noble soul!). On the one hand, your actions may recall those of Mohandas K. Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. On the other, they may recall the mulish nephew who would not eat until his parents bought him a paintball gun.
To explore those issues against the backdrop of a recent, much publicized professorial fast that ended last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (The Chronicle, February 19), we spoke to an academic hunger striker from years past.
Ralph E. Luker is a retired, well-known historian of the civil-rights movement and a member of the prominent group blog Cliopatria, part of George Mason University’s History News Network Web site. Thirteen years ago, he was a man on the verge of losing his academic career. Mr. Luker engaged in a hunger strike when his bid for tenure was denied at Antioch College — an institution whose proud tradition of campus activism made it no more receptive to his protest.
Putting Higher Ed Out Of Reach
TomPaine.com: Putting Higher Ed Out Of Reach
By: Howard Karger
February 20, 2007
Howard Karger is professor of social work at the University of Houston and author of Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy .
Margaret Spellings , Bush’s secretary of education, is a tough-talking Texan. Like the motto on her notepad—“Put on your big girl panties and deal with it!”—Spellings won’t take crap from anyone, especially Buster the animated bunny. Her first act as secretary was to ask PBS to cut an episode of “Postcards from Buster” which showed two lesbian couples. She also wanted PBS to refund the money spent on that filthy episode.
Apart from her concern about the pernicious influence of lesbians on young children,
Spelling has her eye on higher education. Similar to conservatives like David Horowitz (founder of the McCarthyist Students for Academic Freedom), she is concerned with protecting the tender minds of college students from liberal professors, especially those who are tenured with academic freedom.Apart from her concern about the pernicious influence of lesbians on young children, Spelling has her eye on higher education. Similar to conservatives like David Horowitz (founder of the McCarthyist Students for Academic Freedom), she is concerned with protecting the tender minds of college students from liberal professors, especially those who are tenured with academic freedom.
Since Spellings never worked in a school system, and has no formal training in education (her B.A. is in political science), she is free to make educational policy on purely ideological grounds, unencumbered by the real problems facing America’s teachers.
Comments Off on Putting Higher Ed Out Of Reach
Posted in Commentary, Government