Departments

;

colleges and universities

  • SOURCE: PEN America
    7/13/2023

    The Next Culture War Battle? College Accreditation

    by Jeffrey Sachs and Jeremy C. Young

    Officials in Florida and elsewhere are seeking to overthrow established relationships with accrediting bodies because those organizations help to shield universities against political censorship and interference with teaching and learning. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    6/29/2023

    SCOTUS's Affirmative Action Decision Caps a Decades-Long Backlash

    by Jerome Karabel

    A scholar of university admissions says that the decision will be a "monumental setback for racial justice" that is rooted in myths about the policy that have surfaced through decades of opposition to affirmative action. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    6/14/2023

    Turning Universities Red

    by Steve Fraser

    American colleges were built to serve the children of elites and maintain the social order they dominated. Despite fears of liberal indoctrination on campus, growing labor movements including all workers are the only way that colleges will really make a more egalitarian society. 

  • 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: 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: 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.