Higher Education News From Around The Web
Dan Mithcell’s UCLA Faculty Association Blog:
- by Unknown0From the NY Times: …Earlier last week, the Education Department agreed in a joint stipulation to bar anyone detailed there after Jan. 19 from entering many of its databases until Monday, including its National Student Loan Data System.Lawyers for the Trump administration had argued that whatever Mr. Musk’s goals may be in scrutinizing the department’s […]
- by UnknownThe deadline to process and refund any 2024 excess contributions to participants from their UC Tax-Deferred 403b and/or 457(b) Deferred Compensation Plan is Tuesday, April 15, 2025. The properly submitted request MUST be received by UC Retirement Savings Program by Tuesday, April 1, 2025 in order for Fidelity to meet the distribution deadline of Tuesday, […]
- by UnknownThere is a saying among lawyers that goes something like "bad cases make bad law." And there is an item pending review at the systemwide Senate level that I suspect comes from a particular situation that arose somewhere in the UC system, leading someone to say that there ought to be a law. And now […]
- by UnknownFrom a Daily Bruin interview with Steve Lurie, recently-appointed AVC for campus and community safety:…DB: USAC has a resolution on its (Feb. 11) agenda to declare its lack of confidence in you and to get them your appointment. Do you have any response to it?SL: I look forward to working with every Bruin group who […]
- by UnknownWe are finally getting around to second day of the Regents meeting of January 22-23. The meeting began with public comments. Several were anti-Israel demands for divestment. There were also some comments dealing with concerns about antisemitism. Other topics included staff pay, the UC budget, basic needs, concerns about the status of undocumented students given […]
Chris Newfield & Michael Meranze’s Remaking the University
- by Chris NewfieldSeoul National University on Feb14, 2025It’s increasingly clear that knowledge destruction is not a side effect of Trump’s regime but its central mission. A four-year presidential campaign based on lies, disinformation, and abusive accusations was the means. The elimination of knowledge—because it competes with power–is the end. This project has a number of branches. One […]
- by Chris NewfieldMississippi River Outside the MLA New Orleans on Jan 10 2025by Bruce RobbinsI didn’t sign the pledge not to renew my MLA membership. (Mine is a lifetime membership, so in any case the organization would not miss out on any money from me). The pledge says, “I refuse to be affiliated with or financially support […]
- by Chris NewfieldBosphorous from Boğaziçi University on February 5, 2010I've written two dozen posts on this blog about indirect cost recovery (ICR), going back at least to 2009. But this is my first when the topic has made national news, unfortunately as part of Trump's total war on professional knowledge (that series started here). ICR seems like a […]
- by Chris NewfieldMichael Burawoy Starts the Seminar on November 13, 2019Grief-stricken only begins to describe how I feel about the loss of Michael Burawoy, a force for knowledge and of mutual support on so many fronts. I knew him as an allied analyst and critic of universities in general and the University of California in particular. We […]
- by Chris NewfieldMLA Convention New Orleans on January 11, 2025by Anthony Alessandrini'On the second day, we held signs with the names of scholars martyred in Gaza and lay down together on the floor outside the hotel ballroom where the MLA’s elected delegates were walking in to hold their assembly. every name every name every name. Many delegates […]
Here are the latest posts from the Berkeley Faculty Association:
- by Michael BurawoyOn May 14, John A. Pérez, Chair of the Board of Regents, and Michael V. Drake, UC President, made a joint statement, congratulating Governor Newsom for “proposing the largest state investment in UC’s history.” The statement waxed enthusiastic about the transformative impact of the revised budget. Reading between the lines and examining the often–elusive details, […]
- by Michael BurawoyShared governance, the concept of administration and faculty making policy and decisions together, has a long history at Berkeley. Our campus’s Academic Senate has more power than most such bodies across the country: the Budget Committee plays a central role in determining FTE, granting tenure and promotion, and other Senate committees control curriculum and set […]
- by Michael BurawoyJust in time for Mother’s Day, parents with children in campus childcare faced plans for increased tuition, shorter hours, and reduced staff next fall. Meanwhile, UCOP is putting the final touches on an improved paid family leave program that is still worse than that of comparable employers throughout the state. Why is the University of […]
- by Michael BurawoyIn early April, the UC unveiled their “Proposed Revisions for UCPD” plans. One proposal is the creation of “Systemwide Response Teams”—in effect, a UC paramilitary force that can be mobilized in response to protest actions, and to provide crowd management and “riot control.” These teams would be armed with body armor, chemical agents, and explosive […]
- by Michael BurawoyThe lecturers’ union (UC-AFT) and UCOP have been bargaining over a new contract for more than two years, with little to show for it. Despite the legal obligation to bargain in good faith, the UCOP negotiators have refused to bargain on basic issues, while regularly demonstrating their disrespect for their UC-AFT interlocutors. Senate faculty who have […]
National higher education blogs of interest, starting with AAUP’s Academe Blog:
- by Guest BloggerBY DANIEL A. SEGAL Recent actions by Harvard University’s administration merit the Association’s timely consideration and—absent a satisfactory response from Harvard—adoption of a censure of the university’s administration. Issuing this censure will require, however, that the Association adapt and expand its censure practices. Whereas the AAUP’s existing practices are limited to responding to harm to…
- by Hank ReichmanBY HANK REICHMAN The recently published Winter issue of Academe, devoted to the theme of “higher education in wartime,” which I guest-edited, includes three articles by Ukrainian scholars. Odesa historian and philosopher Oksana Dovgopolova writes movingly about the impact of the war on her institution. “War creates immense challenges for higher education—there is no way around…
- by Guest BloggerBY MARJORIE HEINS Harvard University’s announcement last month that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism was a sufficiently serious blow to academic freedom at that hallowed institution that it motivated me, as a graduate of Harvard Law School, to submit a letter to Harvard, the alumni magazine. As Hank Reichman’s “Anticipatory…
- by Guest BloggerBY NATHANIEL MILLS It has now been almost a year since then-President Jeff Ettinger of the University of Minnesota intervened to revoke the properly vetted job offer to Raz Segal to serve as faculty director of UMN’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. This decision was denounced by the UMN chapter and national leadership of…
- by Guest BloggerBY HISTORIANS FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY This statement was issued by the steering committee of Historians for Peace and Democracy on January 31, 2025, and sent to its membership. “Who controls the present controls the past,” wrote George Orwell in 1949. Authoritarian regimes have long tried to rewrite history to advance their political objectives. The…