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9/11 conspiracy theories and academic freedom
Brigham Young University has placed physicist Steven Jones on paid leave while it investigates his publications related to 9/11 and his claims that evidence shows the use of thermite in the collapse of the WTC. Let me state right off the bat that I don’t find his argument credible. Jones is also one of the […]
Of liberal arts colleges, a core curriculum, and contingent faculty
One might suppose that the following is an object lesson about the type of overgeneralizing that Donald Kagan swims in for his Commentary magazine piece about imperious faculty. (Much better: head to University Diarist’s corresponding entry and the fascinating comment thread.) Are faculty blocking a core curriculum either through their pomo aspirations or laziness/caring more […]
Two fundamental confusions over tenure and academic freedom
Two stories this morning Inside Higher Ed highlight basic confusions many have about tenure and academic freedom, respectively. Tenure protects miscreants. Wharton emeritus L. Scott Ward was finally fired after a third arrest for pedophilia-related charges. Over several Penn administrations, Ward had been untouched. Uh, er, not fired. We don’t know whether there was any […]
Charles Miller’s colloquy on CHE: dodging the market debate
Charles Miller appeared for a Chronicle of Higher Ed live chat about the Spellings Commission, and there were three–not just the one asked by me, but three–questions about markets and higher education. Here are his responses, with my annotations in brackets: That’s a very broad and important question and deserves a better answer than I […]
Academi-size it!
Gotta love Da Fish sometimes, when he uses cool jargon like “academicize” to explain the distinctions between legitimate teaching and propaganda in this tagline to the Christian Science Monitor piece on Kevin Barrett: “That doesn’t mean you can’t bring current political questions into the classroom,” he says. “But they have to be academicized.” Here, Stanley Fish’s […]