By Sherman Dorn on June 8, 2017
I was sorry to hear earlier this spring that my former colleague Erv Johanningmeier had died. As the chair of a search committee in 1996, he was responsible for Barbara Shircliffe, Chris Ogren, and my coming to the University of South Florida.1 In my job interview I found a gruff, intellectually curious future colleague who […]
Posted in Florida, History, The academic life
By Sherman Dorn on January 26, 2017
My thoughts on this start with education policy but is more general: Whether elected Republican officials can reverse a slew of Obama administration policies may depend on whether each policy area is more like a pendulum or more like a ratchet. Elite Republicans hope that by the end of 2018, federal health care, environmental, tax, and […]
Posted in Education policy, History, Politics
By Sherman Dorn on November 11, 2016
This Veterans Day, many of my fellow Americans are worried about their vulnerability after a hate-filled national campaign. Or, rather, not worried but justifiably anticipating attacks, if not having witnessed/experienced them directly. So today, I’m remembering the Double-V campaign in World War II, pushed by the Pittsburgh Courier, as Black soldiers, veterans, and their families committed […]
Posted in History, Politics
By Sherman Dorn on August 23, 2016
Yesterday, the California Supreme Court declined to hear appeals-court decisions that ruled against plaintiffs in two cases: the Vergara case that tried to argue that state law and common practice that protected teachers in various ways violated the state’s constitutional promises to children, and the Campaign for Quality Education case that was the latest round in court battles […]
Posted in Education policy, History
By Sherman Dorn on June 28, 2016
Jack Schneider has a defense of American public schooling up at The Atlantic this week, and while it has an historian’s argument, it feels much like the claims of David Berliner and Bruce Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis, published 20 years ago, in the middle of the Bill Clinton era and most of a decade before No Child […]
Posted in Education policy, History
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