colleges and universities

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  6/1/2023
  

  Amid Anti-Woke Panic, Interdisciplinary Programs Inherently Vulnerable

  by Timothy Messer-Kruse

  Because standards of academic freedom like those of the AAUP tie that freedom to expertise within recognized professional communities of scholars, those doing interdisciplinary work and working in programs like ethnic studies have less institutional protection against charges that they are engaged in politics rather than scholarship. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  4/7/2023
  

  A Proponent of Technified, Skills-Based Higher Ed is Out, but His Soulless Vision Lives On

  by François Furstenberg

  Jason Wingard's presidency at Temple is over, but his vision of higher education shaped by the skills needs of business and the diminishment of the value of subject experts has enough backing among moneyed interests in tech and education reform to remain dangerous. 

• 
• 4/9/2023
  

  If Universities are a Culture War Battleground, it's Time for University Workers to Fight Together

  by Jeff Kolnick

  "If higher education loses out in the culture wars, so too will American democracy. Our only hope is to enter the fray with our own culture in mind, and to insist on respect. If we stay on the sideline, we will lose."

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  3/14/2023
  

  Is the Loss of Collegiality about Manners or Workloads?

  by Paula Marantz Cohen

  If the campus conversation is a lost art for both professors and students, a big part of the solution must be restoring the time – and security – to talk. 

• 
• 3/9/2023
  

  North Dakota Prof: Tenure Reform Bill is About Silencing Whistleblowers

  by Eric Grabowsky

  A professor says that, aside from academic freedom implications, a bill proposed to reduce tenure protections is aimed at intimidating critics of the university system's management. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/1/2023
  

  Descendants of Slaveholder Donor Denounce Law School Name Change

  T.C. Williams donated a considerable sum to the University of Richmond's law school. He also relied on slave labor in his tobacco and manufacturing businesses. The university's new policy requires them to remove his name from a building. Descendants call this hypocritical and ungrateful and demanded an inflation-adjusted refund with interest of $3.4 billion.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/27/2023
  

  The Lost Promise of College for All

  by Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire

  The expansion of college education—and the encouragement directed at all Americans to pursue a degree—was driven by bipartisan agreement that education could increase prosperity and alleviate inequality. Unfortunately, without a commitment to public provision, the price has been massive individual debt. 

• 
• SOURCE: Law and Political Economy Project
  2/20/2023
  

  When the Public University is a Corporate Landlord

  by Charmaine Chua, Desiree Fields and David Stein

  During negotiations with graduate student workers, UCLA administrators claimed that increasing stipends would effectively subsidize local landlords through higher rents and squeeze the poor in the Los Angeles housing market. The reality is that the university is an investor in a huge real estate trust that is hiking rents itself. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/14/2023
  

  HBCUs and the 1950s Red Scare

  by Candace Cunningham

  South Carolina officials were able to use the purse strings to coerce public HBCU administrators to expel student activists. When private HBCUs became centers of sit-in organizing, state legislators turned to accusations of Communism. 

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  2/8/2023
  

  If Affirmative Action is Banned, Colleges Need to Do Wealth-Based Admissions Right

  by Peter Dreier, Richard D. Kahlenberg and Melvin L. Oliver

  Omitting family wealth from admissions decisions harms educational equity twice over, because wealth is so influential over opportunity and because it correlates so strongly with race. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/19/2023
  

  Colleges are Vulnerable to Political Attacks Because They've Abandoned their Roots

  by Christine Adams

  "Despite the persistence of conservative campaigns against higher education, American colleges and universities have never really hit on an adequate response to these attacks."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/15/2023
  

  Affirmative Action Cases May Force Colleges to Rethink Everything

  Some experts warn of a possible lost generation of college students from underrepresented backgrounds if race-conscious admissions are prohibited. 

• 
• SOURCE: Christianity Today
  1/13/2023
  

  Council of Christian Colleges and Universities Gets Court Win on Exemptions to Discrimination Law

  A judge dismissed a lawsuit by LGBTQ students that challenged the faith-based exemptions that Christian colleges can claim from enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. 

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  12/7/2022
  

  Beyond Yale and Stanford, Colleges are Dropping the Ball on Student Mental Health

  by David M. Perry

  If two high profile incidents are any indication, many colleges seek to move students with mental health concerns off campus as quickly and quietly as possible, putting their own liability and reputation ahead of the needs of students for supportive community. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/29/2022
  

  Can Universities Protect Diverse Admissions and Excellence?

  by John Thelin

  The vastly improved technology available to college admissions officers means that a handful of selective institutions can serve the interest of both nominal diversity and elite reproduction, while exacerbating the divide in elementary and secondary educational quality in the nation. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  11/21/2022
  

  Demographics and the Shrinking Future of College

  As the number of students promises to contract in coming years, the workforces and communities that depend on small colleges and regional public universities face dire prospects. 

• 
• 11/20/2022
  

  Should We Burst the Campus "Bubble"—Or Balance It?

  by Elizabeth Stice

  "It is fine for a university to be unusual compared to other environments. That does not make it inherently incapable of preparing people for the real world."

• 
• SOURCE: Academe
  10/15/2022
  

  Higher Ed's Past is Gilded, Not Golden

  by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

  Despite unfavorable comparisons between today's college costs and labor conditions and those prevailing in the 1960s, public higher education was never based on a deep commitment to egalitarianism, and has long financed, rather than funded, college. 

• 
• SOURCE: Academe
  10/18/2022
  

  A New Framework of Values for Universities?

  Historians Jennifer Mittelstadt and Davarian Baldwin discuss how universities must reject the "ivory tower" model to be contributors to the well-being of the communities around them as well as to maintain their intellectual vitality. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10/12/2022
  

  Will Other Elite Unis Follow Princeton's Lead in Rejecting Fossil Fuel Money?

  by Ilana Cohen and Michael E. Mann

  A student movement is realizing its first successes in convincing university administrators to refuse donations that, activists argue, inevitably compromise the integrity of university research on climate change.