Departments

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colleges and universities

  • SOURCE: Madison.com
    4/17/2021

    Two Madison Profs Make 'Collegeland' Podcast About University Life

    Historians Nan Enstad and Lisa Levenstein have produced a podcast that tells the stories of college campuses as places of learning, work, and socialization, seeking to counter both right-wing demonization of campus liberalism and the rose-colored view of university PR. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    4/13/2021

    ‘That Man Makes Me Crazy’: Neil Matkin's Reign at Collin College Draws Scrutiny

    Neil Matkin's regime connects several trends: the politicization of higher ed administration, the diminishment of faculty's role in shared governance, and the imposition of business logic in higher ed administration. But faculty and staff say that the personal element is what makes the situation truly intolerable. 

  • SOURCE: AAUP
    4/2/2021

    Restoring the People’s Universities

    by Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis

    "We see this trend across the nation: when students of color finally began to gain access to higher education, disinvestment and the shrinking of educational opportunity followed."

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/29/2021

    Montana Universities Prepare for Guns on Campuses

    Montana's public universities are struggling to plan for the consequences of the legislation signed in February allowing open and concealed carry of firearms on campuses. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/26/2021

    The Social Justice Purge at Idaho Colleges

    Concerns about free speech on campus should consider the Idaho legislature's recent attacks on "critical race theory" as an effort to use education funds to restrict academic freedom, says NYT opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg.

  • 3/28/2021

    Will the Supreme Court Uphold the NCAA's Version of Amateurism?

    by Ronald A. Smith

    A pending Supreme Court case will test whether the NCAA can bar student athletes from making money from products that make use of their images, a form of property right of "Name, Image, or Likeness." A historian who wrote an amicus brief says the NCAA's claim to protect the amateurism of the athletes is selective and hypocritical.

  • 3/21/2021

    Policing, Protest, and the Role of the University

    by David S. Busch

    Student activists at Northwestern, in other words, are asking a similar question that emerged out of the 1960s and famous protest moments at Jackson State and Kent State in 1970: What should be the university’s public purpose?

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/11/2021

    Tenure’s Broken Promise

    The tenure system was established during historically flush times in higher ed, says historian John R. Thelin. Budgetary, ideological, and political changes affecting higher ed are calling into question whether academic work needs a different system. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/15/2021

    A County Turns Against Its College

    by Emma Pettit

    "For years, locals have made bogeymen out of the faculty, characterizing them as radicals with leftist agendas, committed to indoctrinating students."

  • SOURCE: The Ithacan
    3/3/2021

    Commentary: A Farewell to Ithaca College after 18 Years

    by Sandra Steingraber

    The vulnerability of non-tenure track faculty to budget cuts and layoffs means that the interdisciplinary expertise universities need to sustain important and innovative initiatives is in jeopardy. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    3/6/2021

    Conservative Donors Have Their Own Cancel Culture

    "In 1903, the two students premiered their song at an annual campus minstrel show, where white musicians performed it in blackface. It became a tradition at subsequent minstrel shows and was soon embedded in the university’s culture. Some people apparently want to keep it there forever."

  • SOURCE: The American Prospect
    2/12/2021

    Are Endowments Damaging Colleges and Universities?

    Trends in university endowment management include investing in exotic, illiquid, and difficult-to-value assets. This would have been unthinkable to endowment managers decades ago. Does it accomplish anything besides funnelling fees to financial consultants?

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    2/11/2021

    Open Season on the Faculty

    Despite evidence that liberal indoctrination in classrooms is rare, state legislatures are proceeding with bills that would restrict professors' freedom to teach some subjects and in the case of Iowa to survey the political affiliations of faculty at state institutions. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/9/2021

    We Were the Last of the Nice Negro Girls

    by Anna Deavere Smith

    The playwright and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith recalls her educational experiences at a small historically white college during the Civil Rights era, and the way the campus climate spurred her fellow Black students to develop a distinct identity. 

  • 2/7/2021

    Who Can Claim to be the United States’ First University?

    by Tom McSweeney, Katharine Ello and Elsbeth O'Brien

    New documentary evidence shows that the College of William and Mary was chartered as a university in 1693, making it the first university in the colonies. The story reflects how the sectarian strife of England in the seventeenth century helped Anglican W&M and harmed Puritan Harvard.