Political Science Conference Still Planned for Puerto Rico
By Colleen Flaherty. The Southern Political Science Association confirmed that its annual conference will still take place starting today in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That’s despite a major earthquake that hit the island Tuesday and a string of earlier, smaller earthquakes -- not to mention the ongoing reconstruction from 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria. More...
Professor Loses Job Over Iran Joke
By Colleen Flaherty. Babson College terminated a staff member and adjunct professor who wrote on Facebook that Iran should respond to President Trump’s recent threat to bomb 52 targets of cultural significance by making an American target list of its own -- including a Kardashian family residence and the Mall of America. Babson previously said it was investigating the matter, but Asheen Phansey, the staff member involved, said Thursday that he’d been fired, according to theBoston Herald. More...
'In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education'
By Colleen Flaherty. The American Association of University Professors on Thursday released a statement “In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education,” saying that “slogans and superstition are no match for the growing complexity and interconnectedness of today’s world.” More...
More Support for Harvard Ethnic Studies Scholar Denied Tenure
By Colleen Flaherty. More than 200 senior scholars in Latinx and Latin American studies, ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies, and other fields wrote a letter Monday to Harvard University president Lawrence Bacow in support of a professor who was recently denied tenure. More...
San Juan College Professors Form Union
By Colleen Flaherty. Full- and part-time instructors at San Juan College in New Mexico voted to form a union affiliated with the National Education Association, they announced last week. Eighty-seven of 128 eligible professors voted in support of unionization. More...
Antigay and Unemployed
By Colleen Flaherty. Professor who sought refuge from liberal academe at a Southern Baptist seminary finds out why tenure matters. More...
Minnesota Duluth Faculty Senate Balks at Schools' Merger
By Colleen Flaherty. The University of Minnesota at Duluth’s Faculty Senate says it was left out of a plan to merge the School of Fine Arts with the College of Liberal Arts, according to theStarTribune. The move “makes a mockery of our entire system,” the Senate wrote in a letter to administrators criticizing how they’ve handled shared governance during ongoing budget cuts. More...
Professor Removed from Class Over Hitler Video
By Colleen Flaherty. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst put a professor on leave from teaching for the rest of the semester after she showed classes extra-credit videos that students found offensive. One such video, a parody of the song “Bust Down Thotiana,” was said to demean women, and another included a joke about the Holocaust. More...
Required Pedagogy
By Colleen Flaherty. Online conversation shines a spotlight on graduate programs that teach students how to teach -- and those programs that don't. More...
Making Them Sick
By Colleen Flaherty. Stanford graduate students say it's unacceptable that dependent health-care premiums have increased 80 percent in a few years. Many are pushing for free health care for their kids. More...
