Academic freedom

The quadruple face-palm and academic freedom

Sports Reporter #1: Here comes Florida Atlantic associate professor Jim Tracy, just off his triple face-palm asserting a conspiracy over the Sandy Hook shootings. Sports Reporter #2: Let’s see what he does here. Tracy is relatively new to high visibility academic nuttery, at least at this level of competition. #1: Tracy looks at the timekeeper, […]

Odds and ends to begin spring break

For the first time I can recall, my children and I are on spring break the same week, which given that we are talking the coordination of three different systems, is Spring Break Convergence. It’s great to have our college junior home from the Northeast; on the downside, we cannot complain about the weather for […]

What administrators should say when faculty are controversial

Since both the University of Rhode Island and Florida Atlantic University follow the standard practice of trying to make up responses to controversies over faculty statements, responses that fell well short of a vigorous defense of academic principles, I thought I might provide a boilerplate press release for all colleges and universities that can be […]

Why shared governance is such a damned good thing… for administrators

After I stepped down 19 months ago from being the head of the faculty union at USF, I got ribbed by my successor about “turning to the dark side” with an appointment last August as a department chair. “More like the gray side,” I replied. (In my college, chairs are in the faculty union bargaining […]

My dangerous colleagues in anthropology

My eternal thanks go to Florida Governor Rick Scott, without whom I would never have known that the 0.8% of Florida state university system graduates who major in anthropology1 comprise the major obstacle to state advancements in STEM. I always thought it had something to do with declining state support for higher ed, low requirements […]