Tag Archives: Books

THE ASSAULT ON UNIVERSITIES: A MANIFESTO FOR RESISTANCE

THE ASSAULT ON UNIVERSITIES: A MANIFESTO FOR RESISTANCE

The UK White Paper on universities that was published in June contains yet more proposals that will embed the market ever deeper into our educational system through the entrance of private providers and the extension of a logic of financialisation. The deadline for submissions is 20 September and we encourage you to make a response (http://bit.ly/jpLET3).

We would also like to let you know that the manifesto has now been published in a book, ‘The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance’ (Pluto Press) which contains a series of short essays identifying the consequences of the reforms as well as possible alternatives. We are sure you will find it both stimulating and useful in your response to the attacks on higher education.

Details of the book are at: http://bit.ly/lKgYdE

You can also use the book and manifesto as the focus for a meeting, debate or other form of campaign activity where you work.

We would be delighted to help arrange a meeting on your campus and to build up a head of steam against the government’s disastrous reforms.

No university is immune and there will certainly be a good audience for a lively and topical meeting.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us: hemanifesto@gmail.com (or d.freedman@gold.ac.uk if you have trouble accessing gmail).

Book review: Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University

Education Review:
Neumann, Anna. (2009). Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Univ Press.

Reviewed by Kathleen E. Fite, Texas State Univ-San Marcos.

When in doubt, sue

Inside Higher Ed: ‘The Trials of Academe’

When in doubt, sue. That philosophy has become an expected part of American society and (to the frustration of many in higher education) academe as well. A new book — The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation (Harvard University Press) — combines humor and history to examine the impact (most of it negative) of academic disputes landing in court. Amy Gajda, the author, is assistant professor of journalism and law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She responded via e-mail to questions about her book.

‘Harlem vs. Columbia University’

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Harlem vs. Columbia University’

In 1968 and 1969, students at Columbia University protested against a number of the university’s policies and plans, accusing the institution of racism and imperialism — the latter for the military ties that connected the university to the Vietnam War. Most notably, they opposed Columbia’s intended construction of a gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park, a small green space utilized by the area’s largely black and Puerto Rican residents.

Undercover Student at Liberty U.

Inside Higher Ed: Undercover Student at Liberty U.

A new book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, details the experience of Kevin Roose at Liberty University. Roose was an unlikely Liberty student because he was there on leave from Brown University to explore an institution with different values. As detailed in The Daily Beast, Liberty — known under its founder, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, for taking on critics — is taking a mellow response to the book. University officials have no plans to promote the book, nor to ban it.

Farewell to the Printed Monograph

Inside Higher Ed: Farewell to the Printed Monograph

The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital.

Within two years, press officials expect well over 50 of the 60-plus monographs that the press publishes each year — currently in book form — to be released only in digital editions. Readers will still be able to use print-on-demand systems to produce versions that can be held in their hands, but the press will consider the digital monograph the norm. Many university presses are experimenting with digital publishing, but the Michigan announcement may be the most dramatic to date by a major university press.

A message from Staughton Lynd

I encourage you to get your library to purchase the new memoir by Staughton and Alice Lynd. EWR

Friends,
Greetings. Alice and I have written a joint autobiography entitled Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together. We need your help in getting the book into the hands of the young people for whom it is most intended.

The book begins with a lovely Foreword by our longtime colleague, Tom Hayden. Then come chapters, some written by us both, some by one of us, some by the other. The chapters are grouped in the following sections:

Beginnings (our families, Staughton as a “premature New Leftist” and Alice on “Music and Dance and Discovering Childhood,” how we met and fell in love);

Community (our three years in the Macedonia Cooperative Community in the hills of Georgia);

The Sixties (among other matters, Mississippi Freedom Summer, a trip to Hanoi, Alice’s work in draft counseling and how it planted in our minds the idea of the “two experts” — the professionally trained person and the counselee, client or fellow struggler — who work together);

Accompaniment (how we found our way beyond the Sixties by doing oral history and then law together, with chapters on Nicaragua and Palestine);

The Worst of the Worst (representing and learning from prisoners);

Afterwords (a poem, retrospectives, Alice’s wishes for our daughter Martha’s marriage).

We had some difficulty finding a publisher. At length we signed a contract with Lexington Books. Lexington has produced an attractive hardback edition. On the front cover there is a photograph of the two of us on the day we married (looking very young) and on the back cover a picture taken at our 50th wedding anniversary.

The problem is that this hardback edition is intended for academic libraries and costs $70. Perhaps in part because of the current recession, we have been told that a paperback edition will be forthcoming only if orders from libraries are substantial.

This is where you can help. It could make all the difference in getting this book into the hands of those who will carry on from all of us if you could:

* Ask whatever libraries you are connected with — law libraries, college or university libraries, public libraries — to acquire Stepping Stones. The address of Lexington Books is:

Lexington Books
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite 200
Lanham MD 20706, www.lexingtonbooks.com.

There is a customer service number if desired: 800-462-6420.

* If you are told that the library would purchase a paperback edition but cannot afford an expensive hardback copy at this time, we hope you will write to Lexington Books and tell them that.

Let’s look at the bright side. If your library orders a copy, you can read the durned book for free. And if enough libraries order copies it will hopefully trigger paperback production, and together we can pass on to our successors what one Zapatista has called the hope of creating “another everything.”

With thanks, love, and comradeship,

Staughton Lynd for S & A