In solidarity!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Carol Geary Schneider, who is retiring as President of the Association of American Colleges & Universities after 18 years of service, gave an interview to The Chronicle of Higher Education, during which she discussed the importance of liberal education but also the need for quality and activity-based learning.  Here is an excerpt:

“I think the most important thing is that we actually have clarity about what we mean by liberal education. AAC&U’s actual mission is advancing liberal education and inclusive excellence. Everybody loves the term “inclusive excellence.” I hear policy leaders using it all the time. I wonder if they’ve thought hard about what it means.

I don’t think you can have inclusive excellence unless you have some specificity about what you mean by the excellence, and are working hard to ensure that the curriculum is well-designed so that students with different interests, different backgrounds, different levels of preparation are being guided to the kind of learning they actually need. So an institution should have clear goals for the kind of big-picture learning students need – the broad learning in the liberal arts and sciences, clarity about intellectual skills, clarity about the kinds of practices that students ought to engage in, like research, like service, like project-based learning, collaborative learning. And they ought to have clarity that these things are well-designed into the curriculum.

And all of it ought to be explained to the students before they apply, when they arrive, as they are in their first-year programs, as they move forward in both general education and the major. We think that one of the most important things for a 21st-century liberal education is to have clear connections between students’ majors, whatever they are, and that broad learning so that students have the opportunities to rehearse putting their questions, their interests, their concerns – let’s say they’re going into health work. They may think of themselves as learning how to be a nurse, for example. Well, the nurse is operating in a very, very complicated social and cultural environment, political environment. So you need to connect that broad learning in the liberal arts and sciences to the particular things a student will do as a nurse…

…the notion that liberal education doesn’t belong just to selected disciplines. It really should be a goal for every discipline, for the professional fields, for the career and technical fields. This conversation you’re writing about in the recent issue of The Chronicle about should we really invest in career and technical education, as though that is somehow separate from liberal education, is an outdated way of thinking about it.

We need to make sure that we have broadly educated career and technical people. They need to understand the world they’re part of just as much as anybody else. So we need new designs.

But the point is, we have the framework now for the learning. We have a lot of evidence on practices that actually work and have a two-fer benefit. High-impact practices is the term people are using now. And we didn’t have that term in 1998.

But now we have evidence that the more students are doing – research, projects, writing-intensive activities, e-portfolios, service learning, things that connect actual problems with the academic learning. The more they do that, the more they’re likely to persist in college, and the more they’re likely to actually achieve the kind of learning that is described in these big frameworks – the big picture, the strong intellectual skills, a sense of responsibility for how knowledge is used, and the ability to apply knowledge to real problems.”

Good insights and advice for what we need to be doing more of in higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The media is awash with the legal battle that is evolving in North Carolina over  the bathroom law also known as HB2 (House Bill 2)  that was enacted by the state legislature and Governor Pat McCrory. On Monday, the state and the federal government sued each other over the bill, which (among other things) requires anyone using bathrooms in public schools and agencies to use only those designated for the sex noted on their birth certificates—thus barring transgender employees and students from using the bathroom consistent with their gender identities. The federal government contends, and the weight of legal authority—including in the Fourth Circuit, North Carolina’s home—has found, that discrimination against employees or students on the basis of trans status is discrimination “because of sex” and is thus barred by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As the federal government and state elected leaders launched legal battles over the new law, the University of North Carolina system President Margaret Spellings said the university is “truly caught in the middle.” As reported by the The News & Observer:

“Spellings responded to the U.S. Department of Justice late Monday with a letter saying the university is committed to complying with federal non-discrimination laws. She asked for more dialogue with federal officials to resolve concerns over the law known as HB2.

“Our first responsibility as a University is to serve our students, faculty, and staff and provide a welcoming and safe place for all,” Spellings said in a written statement. “The University takes its obligation to comply with federal non-discrimination laws very seriously. We also must adhere to laws duly enacted by the State’s General Assembly and Governor, however. HB2 remains the law of the State, and the University has no independent power to change that legal reality.”

Spellings’ letter sought to walk a fine line – assuring federal officials that the UNC system intends to follow federal law, while not refusing to follow HB2.

The university had until Monday to respond to the federal government’s threat to withhold federal funding because of the law, which it says discriminates against transgender people. In 2014-15, the UNC system received $1.4 billion in federal funds.

The UNC Board of Governors has scheduled a special meeting Tuesday for a legal briefing from its chief counsel.

Monday was a dramatic day, with Gov. Pat McCrory and legislative leaders filing lawsuits asking a federal judge to declare that HB2 is not discriminatory. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch answered with a federal suit against North Carolina to stop HB2. For now, the university’s federal funding is intact, and Lynch said she looks forward to learning of the UNC board’s next steps.

“We remain anxious to see what those discussions will bring and so we are deferring on requesting the curtailment of funding now, but we do retain that right,” Lynch said. “It would be premature right now to give a date on when we actually will take that step.”

Spellings said further discussions would continue despite the legal actions taken Monday by both sides.”

This is quite a legal mess which the state of North Carolina has very little chance of winning.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It has been eleven years since Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005. One of the results of the catastrophe was that New Orleans was converted into a mostly charter school district controlled by the state.  New legislation is expected to be passed that would retain charter schools but put them under the supervision of a locally-elected school board.  As reported in the New York Times:

“Nothing has defined and even driven the fractious national debate over education quite like [New Orleans] and the transformation of its school system in the decade since Hurricane Katrina.

Reformers say its successes as an almost all-charter, state-controlled district make it a model for other failing urban school systems. Charter school opponents and unions point to what has happened here as proof that the reformers’ goal is just to privatize education and strip families of their voice in local schools across the country.

Now comes another big moment in the New Orleans story: The governor is expected soon to sign legislation returning the city’s schools to the locally elected school board for the first time since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The article goes on to mention that the new proposed model of governance splits the powers of the charter school operators and the school board.

“The schools will keep the flexibility and autonomy, particularly over hiring and teaching, that have made charters most unlike traditional public schools. But the board becomes manager and regulator, making sure schools abide by policies meant to ensure equity and provide broad services, like managing the cost of particularly expensive special education students, that individual schools might not have the capacity or desire to do.

Cities from Boston to Los Angeles are locked in fierce fights over charter schools, which critics say siphon off money and the most engaged families from local districts, while skimming the best students and steering away the most challenging — not always with better results. Families in districts with majorities of poor black and Latino children are increasingly pushing back against educator recruitment groups like Teach for America, scorning their efforts as education tourism for privileged Ivy Leaguers.

People here say the national debate does not fit some of the nuances of the divide in New Orleans. For one thing, the local board itself runs its own share of charter schools. But what has resonated broadly here is the sense that changes to the schools were done to the city’s residents, not with them.”

The article concludes by quoting a charter school operator.

“Those who have in the past resisted a return to local control say they now believe the changes here cannot be sustained without greater involvement from people who actually live here.

“It would be a shame,” said Ben Kleban, the founder of New Orleans College Prep, a charter network, “if our message to the rest of the country was that the only way to reform a school system is to seize control from local people.”

This next phase of the New Orleans and the charter school movement will be watched carefully by education policy makers throughout the country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A lot of interesting comments were made this weekend by those involved with the presidential nominations.

On the GOP side, much of the discussion focused on Republican Party’s support or lack thereof of Donald Trump for the nomination. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s comments came under the most scrutiny after stating last week that he was not prepared to endorse Trump for president.  Other prominent Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Lindsay Graham have likewise made statements indicating that they would not support Trump.  In response, Trump on Sunday with NBC’s Chuck Todd suggested that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would face consequences for not endorsing the businessman as the party’s presidential nominee and stated that he would not rule out trying to remove the Wisconsin congressman from his post as chair of this summer’s GOP convention, a role traditionally granted to the speaker of the House, if Ryan did not come around.

“If he can’t endorse you, do you think he should be chair of the Convention?” Todd asked.

“I don’t want to mention it now. I’ll see after,” Trump said. “I will give you a very solid answer, if that happens, about one minute after that happens. Okay? But there’s no reason to give it right now. But I’ll be very quick with the answer. Let’s see what happens.”

Sarah Palin on CNN Sunday morning was more direct stating that she is backing Ryan’s primary challenger in his upcoming House election.

“I think Paul Ryan is soon to be ‘Cantored,’ as in Eric Cantor,” she told CNN, referring to the former Republican House majority leader who in 2014 unexpectedly lost his primary to tea party challenger Dave Brat. 

She called Ryan’s reluctance to support Trump “not a wise decision.”

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Friday night criticized big media and pointedly appear to use Comcast (MSNBC’s parent company) as an example.  As reported by The Huffington Post:

“The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and by the way, a little bit tired of corporate media as well,” Sanders told Maddow in an interview taped in Burlington, Vermont.

Maddow pressed Sanders for specifics on how he would change the media if he were president.

“What’s the solution to corporate media?” she asked.

“We have got to think of ways the Democratic party starts funding the equivalent of Fox television,” Sanders answered.

MSNBC is a corporate media outlet that is widely seen as a Democratic version of Fox News because of the perceived sympathies of many of its political talk shows.

Sanders went on to argue that “pressure has got to be put on media” to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races.

He then claimed that bringing that pressure to bear would be difficult, since corporate ownership makes it harder for news outlets to cover issues in a way that conflicts with the interests of top executives.

“MSNBC is owned by who?” Sanders asked.

“Comcast, our overlords,” Maddow responded with a chuckle.

“All right, Comcast is not one of the most popular corporations in America, right?” Sanders said.

“And I think the American people are going to have to say to NBC and ABC and CBS and CNN, ‘You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.’” 

Maddow acknowledged the unusually frank nature of the exchange, teasing it in the preceding segment just before the commercial break.

“That was awkward. But in a good way, I think,” Maddow said after previewing the key moment.

“I’ll check if I’m still here after the commercial break,” she added, joking that the interview might have put her job at risk.”

Interesting exchanges!  Just think we only have six more months before the election.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, himself a progressive, writes today about the intolerance that academia has shown conservatives and evangelical Christians.  He provides data demonstrating the predominance of liberal thought among college professors.  For instance:

“Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.

Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents).

In contrast, some 18 percent of social scientists say they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.

In terms of hiring, Kristof comments:

“The scarcity of conservatives seems driven in part by discrimination. One peer-reviewed study found that one-third of social psychologists admitted that if choosing between two equally qualified job candidates, they would be inclined to discriminate against the more conservative candidate.

George Yancey, a black sociologist, who now teaches at the University of North Texas, conducted a survey in which up to 30 percent of academics said that they would be less likely to support a job seeker if they knew that the person was a Republican.

The discrimination becomes worse if the applicant is an evangelical Christian. According to Yancey’s study, 59 percent of anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors would be less likely to hire someone they found out was an evangelical.”

Kristof concludes by referring to:

“Jonathan Haidt, a centrist social psychologist at New York University, who cites data suggesting that the share of conservatives in academia has plunged, and who has started a website, Heterodox Academy, to champion ideological diversity on campuses.

“Universities are unlike other institutions in that they absolutely require that people challenge each other so that the truth can emerge from limited, biased, flawed individuals,” he says. “If they lose intellectual diversity, or if they develop norms of ‘safety’ that trump challenge, they die. And this is what has been happening since the 1990s…”

Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish — like diversity — in our own dominions.”

This is not an easy subject to write or talk about. I was at a meeting at my own university a couple of weeks ago where this issue arose and I commented that we (liberal thinkers in academia) should be confident enough in our views to allow others with different positions and worldviews to speak their mind.  My sense is that what I said was visibly uncomfortable for some of my colleagues (faculty and doctoral students).  One individual commented “Oh God”.

So yes, let’s demonstrate tolerance and let diversity extend to thinking.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The lone protest of a black woman defying a march of 300 uniformed neo-Nazis is set to become an iconic image of resistance to the rise of the far-right in Scandinavia.  As reported by The Guardian:

“A photograph of Tess Asplund, 42, with fist raised against the leadership of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in Borlänge, central Sweden, on Sunday has gone viral in the country.

“It was an impulse. I was so angry, I just went out into the street,” Asplund told the Guardian. “I was thinking: hell no, they can’t march here! I had this adrenaline. No Nazi is going to march here, it’s not okay.”

After joining a large counter-demonstration she took the train back to Stockholm and did not think about what happened until Monday evening, when the photograph spread on social media.

Asplund’s lone protest comes at a time when the far-right in Sweden is increasing its activities, according to Daniel Poohl of Expo, the anti-racist foundation in Stockholm, whose photographer David Lagerlöf captured the image.

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party polls between 15% and 20% and holds the balance of power in parliament, while racist sentiments are fuelled by a fragmented landscape of internet hate sites. The avowedly antisemitic National Socialists of the NRM are the extreme wing of this spectrum, Poohl says.

“We live in a Europe where far-right ideas are becoming more popular, and there is also a reaction against them. It is a time when people are longing for something to channel their urge to resist the Europe that builds borders against refugees, the Europe that cannot cooperate any more. Tess has captured one of the conflicts of our time,” he said.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

George Mason University has historically been the recipient of a number of major donations from conservative sources.  A New York Times analysis estimated that the Charles Koch Foundation alone has given $50 million to the university over the last ten years.  The recent renaming of its Law School for Antonin Scalia has stoked concerns on the campus that large donor contributions are not getting enough disclosure regarding terms and conditions of the  gifts.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The controversy surrounding George Mason University’s relationship with donors escalated on Wednesday, as its Faculty Senate called for the suspension of an agreement between the law school and the Charles Koch Foundation that has divided many professors here.

Last week the Senate passed a resolution expressing “deep concerns” with plans to rename the law school for the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, and protesting the university administration’s failure to disclose more about the agreement. On Wednesday it took an even more aggressive stance. The Senate voted 25 to 12 to call on the university’s leaders to put the agreement, which also involved an anonymous donor, on hold to subject it to more review. The Senate also called for greater oversight of such deals.

“We need to stand up for our rights,” David L. Kuebrich, an associate professor of English and a Faculty Senate member, said in urging his colleagues to pass the measure, which he characterized as written to ensure that their institution conforms with the American Association of University Professors’ standards dealing with donor agreements. He denounced the process by which the university approved the agreement with the law school’s donors, who pledged $30 million for scholarships over several years, as “too rushed — maybe deliberately so.”

Citing a provision in the agreement that has especially aroused faculty opposition — a requirement that the donors be notified if the university replaces the law school’s current dean, Henry N. Butler — Mr. Kuebrich said “donors should have nothing to do with faculty.”

In a separate voice vote, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a motion to request that Ángel Cabrera, George Mason’s president, and Tom Davis, rector of the university’s Board of Visitors, answer a series of questions betraying suspicion of the agreement. One of them asked what the university would do if the anonymous donor cut off the pledged funds before handing all of the money over.

In response to Wednesday’s Faculty Senate votes, Renell Wynn, a university spokeswoman, issued a statement that said George Mason “appreciates the valuable feedback” the Senate offered and is committed to promoting diversity and not being aligned with any single ideological position. She also said, however, that “this gift provides $30 million for scholarships, and that money will help hundreds of students attend law school — students who otherwise might not have had that chance.”

“That is why this gift is so important to Mason,” she went on, “and why we believe we should continue to move forward.”

More than 30 student groups signed a statement criticizing the proposed renaming of the law school as undermining the university’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Speaking to the Faculty Senate, Geoffrey Payne, a junior who is a spokesman for the student group Pride Alliance, argued that, as a gay and transgender student, he would “feel less safe at Mason because the name change would lend credibility to judicial opinions and public statements which fanned the flames of homophobia and transphobia.”

Samantha Parsons, a senior who has been president of the group GMU Student Power, reiterated her group’s demand that all of the university’s grant agreements and memorandums of understanding with private donors “be made transparent and public.” She denounced the proposed law-school name change as “a symptom of a much deeper problem: undue donor influence and our university’s lack of consultation with important university stakeholders, such as faculty and students.”

A difficult issue for a venerable institution but disclosure usually is the best course of action in these situations.  The faculty and students are right to demand greater transparency.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article this morning reviewing Silicon Valley’s infatuation with whether or not the chip- making industry is facing the end of fifty years of Moore’s Law.  Named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore who first observed that the number of components that could be etched onto the surface of a silicon wafer was doubling at regular intervals (every two years or so) and would do so for the foreseeable future. It is hard to overstate the importance of Moore’s Law to the tech world. The premise behind Moore’s Law — that computer chips would do more and cost less — helped Silicon Valley bring startling advances to the world, from the personal computer to smartphones.  As reported by the New York Times: 

“Signaling their belief that the best way to forecast the future of computing needs to be changed, the Semiconductor Industry Associations of the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will make one final report based on a chip technology forecasting system called the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors.

Nearly every big chip maker, including Intel, IBM and Samsung, belongs to the organization, though Intel says it is not participating in the last report.

To replace what the semiconductor industry has done for nearly 25 years, a professional organization called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers announced on Wednesday that it will a create a new forecasting system, called the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, that is intended to track a wider range of computer technologies.

One technology could be so-called quantum computing, a cutting-edge reimagining of how computers work that taps quantum physics — a branch of physics that explains how matter and energy interact. Another could be graphene, a form of carbon and an alternative to silicon that could produce smaller and faster transistors that use less power.

“The end of Moore’s Law is what led to this,” said Thomas M. Conte, a Georgia Institute of Technology computer scientist and co-chairman of the effort to draw up a new set of benchmarks to replace the semiconductor reports. “Just relying on the semiconductor industry is no longer enough. We have to shift and punch through some walls and break through some barriers.”

Predicting the end of Moore’s Law has for years been a parlor game in Silicon Valley, and not everyone in the industry believes that what it has come to represent is nearly over. Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is a notable contrarian and predicts it has the means and know-how to push further into the atomic level.”

It remains to be seen whether we have come to the end of the atomic level of chip production. The future, exactly when is too difficult to say, will definitely rely on subatomic or quantum-level computing.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

John Kasich suspended his presidential campaign yesterday thereby eliminating the last remaining Republican opponent to Donald Trump.  Even though Kasich polled higher than Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton, his candidacy never really caught fire having only won his home state of Ohio.  As reported by the New York Times:

“In a brief speech on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kasich focused mostly on the people he met on the campaign trail. He said that their stories reminded him that “the spirit, the essence of America lies in the hearts and souls of us.”

He did not mention his opponents or any specifics about his future. “As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life,” he said.

Mr. Kasich hoped to be an alternative to Mr. Trump in a contested convention in July. It remains to be seen whether he will support Donald Trump as the GOP standard bearer.  

Tony