higher education 
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SOURCE: AAUP
4/2/2021
Restoring the People’s Universities
by Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis
"We see this trend across the nation: when students of color finally began to gain access to higher education, disinvestment and the shrinking of educational opportunity followed."
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SOURCE: Salem News
3/24/2021
SSU Faculty Retrenchment Plan Accidentally Released
Salem (MA) State University's General Counsel disputed that a spreadsheet accidentally relased in response to a records request and circulated by a faculty member constitutes a plan to terminate faculty positions for budgetary reasons. Faculty argue that it is consistent with pressure they face to accept furloughs and doubt administration assurances that retrenchment is off the table.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
4/1/2021
Higher Education's Racial Reckoning Reaches Far Beyond Slavery
by Davarian L. Baldwin
American universities have grown in harmony with American racism throughout their history, from building on land appropriated from Native Americans to accommodating Jim Crow to promoting social science theories that justified segregation and directly encouraging gentrification through real estate purchasing.
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SOURCE: Truthout
3/28/2021
Colleges Are Using COVID as a Pretext to Make Draconian Cuts to the Humanities
The COVID pandemic has given cover to massive declines in academic employment, with the humanities being particularly hard-hit. It's unclear whether the liberal arts will remain viable at many institutions or how higher ed will change as a result.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/11/2021
Tenure’s Broken Promise
The tenure system was established during historically flush times in higher ed, says historian John R. Thelin. Budgetary, ideological, and political changes affecting higher ed are calling into question whether academic work needs a different system.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
3/15/2021
A County Turns Against Its College
by Emma Pettit
"For years, locals have made bogeymen out of the faculty, characterizing them as radicals with leftist agendas, committed to indoctrinating students."
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SOURCE: The American Prospect
2/12/2021
Are Endowments Damaging Colleges and Universities?
Trends in university endowment management include investing in exotic, illiquid, and difficult-to-value assets. This would have been unthinkable to endowment managers decades ago. Does it accomplish anything besides funnelling fees to financial consultants?
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
2/11/2021
Open Season on the Faculty
Despite evidence that liberal indoctrination in classrooms is rare, state legislatures are proceeding with bills that would restrict professors' freedom to teach some subjects and in the case of Iowa to survey the political affiliations of faculty at state institutions.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/9/2021
We Were the Last of the Nice Negro Girls
by Anna Deavere Smith
The playwright and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith recalls her educational experiences at a small historically white college during the Civil Rights era, and the way the campus climate spurred her fellow Black students to develop a distinct identity.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/8/2021
Biden Has a Unique Opportunity to Undo Years of Education Inequality
by Crystal R. Sanders
Segregated state higher education systems long neglected the responsibility to support graduate and professional education for Black residents, to the point of funding scholarships to send Black students out of state rather than allow the growth of professional and graduate programs in their states.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
2/3/2021
No ‘Social Justice’ in the Classroom: Statehouses Renew Scrutiny of Speech at Public Colleges
"This flurry of activity, in states like Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Iowa, shows lawmakers’ intense focus on campus culture wars amid broader national clashes over how America’s history is taught and remembered."
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SOURCE: In These Times
1/26/2021
Columbia Students Wage the Largest Tuition Strike in Nearly 50 Years
"Organizers say that at least 1,100 students are now actively withholding tuition, and a petition in support of the strike has so far collected more than 4,300 student signatures."
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
1/26/2021
Race on Campus: The Mental Burden of Minority Professors
Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz writes about mental health challenges facing minority faculty at predominantly white institutions, quoting historians Marcia Chatelain and Katrina Phillips.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/22/2020
Even Forgiving Student Loans Won’t Solve The Higher Education Funding Crisis
by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
The federal student loan system has always been a smokescreen for government's failure to support higher education as a public good.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
1/12/2021
Teaching in the Age of Disinformation
Despite many professors' confidence in their ability to foster discussion of controversial subjects, studies suggest avoidance is a much more common approach. Historian of political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca works to make students more direct and purposeful consumers of news.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
11/4/2020
With Presidency Uncertain, an Anxious Higher Ed Braces for What’s Next
"Most important to many in higher education, though, would be Biden’s embrace of the value of scientific expertise, which Trump, throughout the pandemic, has questioned and even belittled."
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
10/14/2020
What's At Stake for Higher Ed in the Election?
Nathan D.B. Connolly and Harvey Kaye are among scholars asked to explain the stakes of the election for higher education.
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SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
10/8/2020
Two Visions of Higher Education Illuminate the Chasm between Harris and Pence
by Marybeth Gasman and Adam Laats
The Vice Presidential candidates' university affiliations--Harris's attendance at Howard and membership in a prominent Black sorority, and Pence's political affinity for Liberty University--show that both HBCUs and Evangelical colleges are important and politically significant parts of the American higher education system.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/2/2020
Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice
by Michael J. Sandel
Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university. His campaign may test the pervasive belief that elite academic credentials are a necessity to govern.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
8/26/2020
Will Covid-19 Revive Faculty Power?
Will the COVID crisis be the moment that seals the power of trustees, donors and administrators over universities organized like corporations, or will faculty organize to reassert shared governance?
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