Dear Commons Community,

Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has been tangling with President Donald Trump for most of this year, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018, declaring on the Senate floor that he “will no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of the president’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior.  As reported by the New York Times:

“Mr. Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary 17-minute speech in which he challenged not only the president but also his party’s leadership. He deplored the “casual undermining of our democratic ideals” and “the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency” that he said had become prevalent in American politics in the era of Mr. Trump.

The announcement appeared to signal a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Last week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that he saw overtaking American politics. Former President George W. Bush, in yet another speech, lamented: “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, saying he “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.” Mr. Corker, appearing more weary than angry, said the president “is debasing our country.”

But Mr. Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation of the president, appeared to issue a direct challenge to his colleagues and his party.

 “It is often said that children are watching,” he said. “Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?”

Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Flake, 54, took direct aim at the president’s policies, notably his isolationist tendencies, but also his behavior and that of his aides. In his time in Washington, Mr. Flake embodied an old-line conservatism. He avidly pitched smaller government, spending cuts and an end to home-district pork-barrel projects, but also supported free trade, engagement with the world and an openness to immigration.”

There are two sides to Flake’s decision.  One is his realization that he likely will not win his party’s nomination because of his anti-Trump positions.  Two he sees the GOP as having caved into Trump and he does not want to be a part of it.  His book, Conscience of a Conservative, published earlier this year, outlined his strong disagreement and distaste for the way Donald Trump has handled the presidency.  His last few months in office should be quite interesting as he joins Senator Bob Corker, who also is not seeking re-election, in forming a Republicans Against Trump voice in the U.S. Senate.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The call below was sent out to AAUP members asking for our support for the University of Wisconsin, one of America’s great public institutions of higher education.  Please consider adding your name and a message.

Tony

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Dear Anthony,

A series of actions taken by Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin state legislature, and the University of Wisconsin system board of regents over the past few years represents a concerted attack on the university as a public good.

Will you tell the Wisconsin system board of regents to protect the university system?

Taken together, the actions constitute a brazen partisan assault on the Wisconsin Idea, the century-old notion that public higher education is a common good. In 2011, legislation curtailed the system faculty’s rights to negotiate collectively. In 2015, the legislature severely weakened tenure, shared governance, and due process—and, by extension, academic freedom.

This fall, another series of attacks is underway. Without meaningful faculty input, the board recently approved an anti-free-speech proposal allowing for the expulsion of students for “disrupting the free speech of others.” It announced a plan to merge the system’s two- and four-year institutions. And it changed the procedures governing searches for chancellors and presidents.  Right now, there is a bill before the state legislature that would abolish a partnership that allowed university employees to work and train students at Planned Parenthood.

Please add your name to protect higher education for the common good.

The AAUP

Dear Commons Community,

It was announced yesterday that Mayor de Blasio and the City University of New York want to double CUNY’s tech graduates by 2022 with a new $20 million program starting in January 2018.

The city’s CUNY 2x Tech campaign will bring new tech professors, career advisers and internships to six CUNY campuses, giving a total of 7,500 undergraduate students an extra boost in technology careers.

De Blasio said the new resources will help students land tech jobs after graduation.

“Our students from CUNY have every bit as much to offer the tech industry as students coming out of Stanford and MIT,” de Blasio said.

“We are adding classrooms and staff, building a bigger pipeline so more New Yorkers can land the jobs of the future.”

CUNY 2x Tech is funded with a mix of local, state and federal money. CUNY’s Lehman and Hunter colleges will receive new tech professors and advisers first, adding internship programs for tech students in the spring.

The program will then expand to four other CUNY schools starting in 2019.

CUNY 2x Tech is the latest program begun under the city’s Tech Talent Pipeline, a multi-agency workforce development effort to place more city students in growing tech fields.

This is a good idea!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading, Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Joseph E. Aoun, the president of Northeastern University.   A brief summary of the book from the jacket cover comments on how artificial intelligence will evolve to the point where knowledge industries such as higher education will have to change to survive.  

“…a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover — to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.

A “robot-proof” education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students’ minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society — a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. The new literacies of Aoun’s humanics are data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Students will need data literacy to manage the flow of big data, and technological literacy to know how their machines work, but human literacy — the humanities, communication, and design — to function as a human being. Life-long learning opportunities will support their ability to adapt to change.”

Some of what Aoun says such as the new literacies are on target but not likely to fill the large gaps that artificial intelligence will cause in the future.  Data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy are already taking off as important areas of study to which college students are gravitating.  Life-long learning likewise has emerged and will continue to accelerate.  Advanced graduate degrees and continuing education are seeing record enrollments.

One of the most important comments Aoun makes is when he quotes Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford:

“Exponential progress [in artificial intelligence] is pushing us toward the endgame.  Preventing business owners from adopting labor-saving technology would require modifying the basic incentives built into the market economy.”

While some of our colleagues in higher education and science research hope and believe that we can control “the tsunami of automation that is about to wash away white-collar jobs” I have my concerns.

Aoun’s conclusion is that “the only certainty about the future is change.”  Higher education as will most other enterprises will change also. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Senators Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are co-sponsoring three bills designed to make the cost of college clearer before applying to a school, before picking one, and on a continuing basis while trying to complete a degree.

The first bill is the Net Price Calculator Improvement Act. This calculator would allow college shoppers to input data and get a rough sense of how much financial aid a school might offer them.  This calculator would be vital given that too many families dismiss colleges with high sticker prices out of hand, without realizing that few people pay the sticker price at many private colleges anymore. The bill would force schools to put the calculator on the same webpage where families look for cost and admission information. Plus, it would encourage the Department of Education to develop a universal calculator containing the data of every college, which would make comparisons easier.

Bill No. 2 is the Understanding the True Cost of College Act, and aims to force colleges to write clear financial aid award letters. These letters are often so badly crafted that some of Senator Franken’s constituents complained that they could not tell whether they were being offered grants (which they did not have to pay back) or loans (which they generally did).

“Most financial aid administrators mean well,” said Brendan Williams, director of knowledge for uAspire, which helps students and others decode the financial aid system. “But sometimes they lose sight of where students are when getting these letters. It’s a foreign language almost.”

The True Cost bill would mandate the use of a standard template for award letters, so that recipients would have a clear sense of what college would cost, how much money they might have to borrow and how much grant money was being offered, free and clear.

The third bill, the Know Before You Owe Act, co-sponsored with Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, is aimed at giving students a running total of their debt and its ramifications during each year at school. Currently, students get some loan counseling on the way in and some more on the way out, but that’s it.  If this bill passes, the annual check-in will include an explanation of students’ projected debt-to-income ratio based on the average salary for people in their major. Borrowers would also have to manually enter the amount of federal loans they wished to use, so that they’d be making a conscious decision about debt and not simply checking a box to grab everything they were eligible to borrow.

The chance of these bills passing both houses of Congress are slim but parts of them might be included in the Higher Education Authorization Act.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning examining the role of today’s billionaires and their foundations.  The reporter for this piece entitled,  Giving Away Billions as Fast as They Can, takes a critical look at how they are trying to re-shape the world through their own political and social lenses.  Here is an excerpt:

“In a matter of years, a new crop of ultra-wealthy Americans has eclipsed the old guard of philanthropic titans. With names like Soros, Gates, Bloomberg, Mercer, Koch and Zuckerberg, these new megadonors are upending long-established norms in the staid world of big philanthropy.

They have accumulated vast fortunes early in their lives. They are spending it faster and writing bigger checks. And they are increasingly willing to take on hot-button social and political issues — on the right and left — that thrust them into the center of contentious debates.

Plenty of billionaires are still buying sports teams, building yachts and donating to museums and hospitals. But many new philanthropists appear less interested in naming a business school after themselves than in changing the world.

“They have a problem-solving mentality rather than a stewardship mentality,” said David Callahan, founder of the website Inside Philanthropy and author of “The Givers,” a book about today’s major donors. “They are not saving their money for a rainy day. They want to have impact now.”

…

When news of George Soros’s $18 billion transfer of wealth to the Open Society Foundations was announced, reaction from conservatives was swift and predictable. Fox News called him an “Uber-liberal billionaire.” Breitbart News said the gift “makes his organization the biggest player on the American political scene,” adding that “the foundation’s work has supported dogmatic, aggressive left-wing groups that disrupt liberal democracy and stifle opposing voices.”

Mr. Soros became a lightning rod for conservative criticism largely because of his own political contributions rather than his foundation’s spending. He was a major donor to Hillary Clinton, and spent millions of dollars on efforts to defeat Donald J. Trump in last year’s presidential election.

Yet he is equally reviled in certain circles for his philanthropic work. Since the 1990s, Mr. Soros has used the Open Society Foundations to advance causes that are deeply unpopular with many Republicans, including loosening drug laws, promoting gay rights and calling attention to abuses by the police.

Mr. Gaspard of the Open Society Foundations asserts that Mr. Soros is not courting controversy. Rather, he said, Mr. Soros is simply on the right side of history. “The rights of the Jewish community in 1937 in Berlin may have been deemed controversial by some in that society, but we all appreciate today the inherent value in that fight,” he said. “The same is true today, when we are involved in safe needle transfers for drug addicts, or when we’re engaged in supporting the rights of sex workers in Johannesburg, or the Rohingya in Myanmar.”

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, is also no stranger to criticism. The purpose of his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, is to “ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people.” In practice, this has meant Mr. Bloomberg spending hundreds of millions of dollars on issues including gun control and obesity prevention, drawing the ire of Republicans who oppose what they see as excessive regulation.

Even the Gates Foundation, which is “dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals around the world,” sometimes finds itself drawn into the culture wars. Global Justice Now, an advocacy organization based in London, said in a report that the Gates Foundation is “not a neutral, charitable strategy for which the world should be thankful” but “a specific ideological strategy that promotes neo-liberal economic policies.”

This isn’t the first time philanthropy has been politicized. A century ago, Julius Rosenwald, a part owner of Sears Roebuck & Company, emerged as a champion of African Americans. Mr. Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman from Chicago, befriended the black educator Booker T. Washington and began funding the construction of schools for African Americans across the Jim Crow South. When the Ku Klux Klan burned down his schools, he simply rebuilt them. In doing so, Mr. Rosenwald made enemies.

“Julius Rosenwald was the first social justice philanthropist,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. “He upset all of the powers in the South.”

That, in Mr. Walker’s estimation, was a good thing. And today, Mr. Walker is encouraging donors to find their inner Julius Rosenwald. “Philanthropy should not be an expression of only one’s wealth and power,” he said. “It also needs to be an expression of humility and an expression of skepticism about some of the very systems and structures that produced one’s wealth. What I hope for is that more philanthropists in this generation understand the difference between generosity and justice.”

There are equally powerful forces flexing their financial muscles on both sides of the political spectrum. And, like Mr. Soros, conservatives are using both foundations and political donations to achieve their goals.

Though the brothers Charles and David Koch are best known for their work supporting Republicans, they also fund a network of philanthropies that support efforts to, among other things, question climate change and encourage conservative thinking on college campuses. The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah Mercer, a prominent supporter of President Trump, has bankrolled conservative think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and the Heartland Institute.

“The wealthy have become more polarized along with the rest of America,” said Mr. Callahan. “You have more liberal, progressive wealthy people than ever before. Meanwhile, you have lots of conservative rich people. There’s this escalating arms race among mega donors.”

I would add that our mega-philanthropists are not only becoming more polarized but to a degree have fueled the polarization that exists.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, delivered a searing, personal defense of President Trump’s phone call this week to the widow of a slain Army soldier, describing yesterday the trauma of learning about his own son’s death in Afghanistan and calling the criticism of Mr. Trump’s condolences unfair.  Mr. Kelly lashed out at Representative Frederica S. Wilson, Democrat of Florida, for publicizing the call between Mr. Trump and Myeshia Johnson, whose husband, Sgt. La David T. Johnson, was one of four American soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger.  As reported by the New York Times:

“Mr. Kelly accused Ms. Wilson — who was in a car with Ms. Johnson when Mr. Trump called and is a longtime family friend — of being a publicity-seeking opportunist. He said that the congresswoman’s willingness to breach the confidentiality of Mr. Trump’s words is evidence of a broader decline in the values of an American society that no longer treats women, religion, “life” or Gold Star families as sacred.

“It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation — absolutely stuns me,” Mr. Kelly said during a somber, 18-minute appearance in the White House briefing room. He said that he was so upset by Ms. Wilson’s appearances on TV news shows that he had to collect his thoughts by walking through the graves at Arlington National Cemetery for more than an hour.

Mr. Kelly struck a tone that was more even, if just as powerful. He displayed scorn for a society that he said does not appreciate the sacrifice of those in the military. “Most of you as Americans don’t know them,” he said, bemoaning that “there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate but required.”

A retired Marine general whose son Second Lt. Robert Kelly was slain in battle in 2010, Mr. Kelly has long guarded his personal story of loss even as he served as a high-profile public official. He broke that silence in dramatic fashion on Thursday, offering — from his personal and professional experience — a detailed, even excruciating description of what happens to the remains of those killed in combat, and how the grieving families back home are notified.

“Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud,” Mr. Kelly told an unusually hushed room filled with reporters. “They’re packed in ice, typically at the air head, and then they’re flown to — usually Europe, where they’re then packed in ice again and flown to Dover Air Force Base, where Dover takes care of the remains, embalms them, meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the medals that they’ve earned, the emblems of their service.”

He testified to the deep pain that parents feel when they get an early-morning knock on the door from an official to tell them that their son or daughter has been killed in action. “The casualty officer proceeds to break the heart of a family member,” Mr. Kelly said, his eyes reddening as he spoke.

And he described the moment that he got the knock on his own door: A military official telling him that his son “was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed,” Mr. Kelly recalled. “He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we were at war.”

…

Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Kelly’s blunt remarks will have impact because of the stark contrast with an administration that has repeatedly lost credibility with the public.

“Its great power was you knew he was telling the truth, and in all specifics,” said Ms. Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist. “Kelly comes to the podium and it was credible, and you felt a kind of relief, and respect and gratitude.”

The surprise appearance by Mr. Kelly came after Mr. Trump and the White House were defensively consumed by the president’s actions this week — first, appearing to criticize former presidents for failing to call the families of fallen service members, and later for the words Mr. Trump chose to use in speaking with Sergeant Johnson’s widow.”

Politicizing the death of a slain Army soldier is questionable for a public figure.  However, let’s be fair here, it was Trump who started the politicizing when he criticized former presidents for not contacting the families of our soldiers killed in action.  We hear you Mr. Kelly but you have to call out your boss as well!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Counter demonstrators greatly outnumbered white nationalist Richard Spencer’s supporters yesterday at the University of Florida, their chants drowning Spencer out during his speech.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“…hundreds more people protested with signs and anti-Nazi chants alongside hundreds of police officers there to prevent violence.

Anti-Spencer protesters shouted, “Not in our town! Not in our state! We don’t want your Nazi hate!” and “Let’s go Gators” during his speech, frustrating the head of the National Policy Institute.

Three or four skirmishes occurred during the long afternoon after single Spencer supporters confronted the counter demonstrators, trying to speak and rile the crowds up. One man, wearing a white shirt with swastikas drawn on, was punched and chased out of the area. At least three others were quickly surrounded by crowds that shouted them down, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” and pushed them until they left the area or were chased behind police lines.

The Alachua County Sheriff said two people were arrested. Sean Brijmohan, 28, was charged with possession of a firearm on school property. The office said in a tweet that he had brought a gun onto the campus after being hired by a media organization as security. David Notte, 34, was charged with resisting an officer without violence.

Five people had minor injuries and were immediately treated by fire rescue teams, authorities said.

The school estimated it would spend $600,000 on security to ensure no repeat of violent clashes connected to a white nationalist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one dead in August.

School officials cited the Charlottesville violence in rejecting an initial request from Spencer to speak at the university. They later relented on free speech grounds. 

Florida’s governor had declared a state of emergency for the event.”

It appears the situation was handled with minimal violence and harm.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Refusing to buckle under pressure from President Trump, Commissioner Roger Goodell said yesterday that the National Football League won’t stop its players from kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.  As reported by The New York Daily News:

[Goodell said] … the league wants to help them in their political activism — in the face of President Trump’s sharp criticism of the quiet protests during “The Star-Spangled Banner” at numerous games this season.

“We spent today talking about the issues that our players have been trying to bring attention to. About issues in our communities to make our communities better,” Goodell told reporters.

During the meeting at the Conrad Hotel in Manhattan, the protests themselves actually weren’t discussed very much, players said.

“We were really more talking about solutions and how we get the results that we want to get,” said Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, a players spokesman.

“Conversations are ongoing,” Jenkins added. “We’re looking forward to the opportunity to really put a good plan together.”

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross called the meeting “constructive.”

“We heard what they had to say, and they heard us,” Ross said. “It’s open talks, and that’s a good thing.”

Outside the hotel, two dozen supporters of Black Lives Matter New York held a rally backing the players — particularly former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the wave of gridiron activism when he knelt during the national anthem last year in protest of racial injustice in America.”

Right decision on the part of the NFL.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article yesterday describing a program, Preparing Future Faculty, that helps Ph.D. graduates find positions appropriate for their degree.  As described by the Chronicle:  The goal of the program is to introduce Ph.D. students and postdocs on campuses nationwide to the realities of being a professor. The program exposes them to what faculty life looks like at the kinds of colleges where they’re most likely to be hired. The article goes on to describe Duke University’s efforts with the program.

“Its participants, known as fellows, visit nearby institutions that are starkly different from Duke, including private liberal-arts colleges, a historically black college, a community college, a women’s college, and a sprawling land-grant institution, where they sit in on undergraduate classes and talk with faculty members, administrators, and students. Faculty mentors on those campuses talk frankly to them about the demands of academic life, and provide insider tips on conducting academic job searches, among other things.

In the end, not every fellow becomes a professor, but that outcome is not unexpected. “Ph.D.s can do many, many things with their degree,” says Hugh Crumley, the program’s director and assistant dean for academic affairs, who holds a doctorate from the University of Virginia. “And Duke has plenty of programs to help them figure out what that is.”

A Chronicle analysis of 12 cohorts of the Duke program, from 2004-5 to 2015-16, reveals what became of the vast majority of the fellows. Of the pool of almost 350 people, The Chronicle was able to track down 93 percent of them, and they ended up as follows:

• 47 percent are now academics, of whom 87 percent are tenured or on the tenure track.
• 26 percent have a job in the private sector, in government, or at a nonprofit organization.
• 5 percent hold nonteaching, nonresearch positions at a college or university.
• 4 percent work as university research scientists.
• 2.5 percent run their own businesses or work for themselves.
• 15.5 percent, usually the most recent participants, are doing postdocs or finishing up their Ph.D.s.

The paths that the program’s fellows took reflect many things: individuals’ choices and evolution, quirks of fate, and forces outside of their control, like the flagging academic job market or the hypercompetitive environment for federal research grants.”

The article concludes with stories of four Ph.D. graduates and their current employment.

Students and colleagues here at the CUNY Graduate Center may find the Chronicle piece interesting reading.

Tony