Academic Freedom

The American Condolleezza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements.
Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed).

Brave New Films have updated their documentary, Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, on the billionaires David and Charles Koch. The Kochs like to operate in the dark, where evil is said to thrive. The best tonic is said to be shining a light in the darkness, and that is what Brave New Films has done.

bad Jews acting badly; education’s leaders a la Walmart; culture bought and paid for by whitey

Note: adjunct faculty and full-time historian, Harvey Whitney, short interview below story!

Excerpts from author, foreign correspondent Chris Hedges’ talk at Northeastern University in support of its now banned Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. [Hedges is at his best -- DV editor]

With fits and starts, it’s been difficult penning this most recent perspective for Dissident Voice. So many cascading, rotting, and broken systems tumbling down and splaying any sort of agency in the US of Amnesiacs. It’s a daily scab being slowly ripped up. The entire media morass, even the so-called lefties, it’s a schizoid world, indeed.

Iymen Chehade, a professor at Chicago’s Columbia College

By Eva Bartlett | Palestine Chronicle | March 28, 2014

I’ll flip the classroom on this post, putting down my response to another middling post from that middling thing called, Inside Higher Education, this on-line blog advertising sheet, DC-based (first problem) and one that is just a hotbed of behind-the-times (second knock against it) and failing to really know  the on-the-ground (third, knock) reality of school, community, real faculty and, well, the non-dominant white male/female perspectives (4th knock), the ones bred and enabled on that east coast (another knock) where we have seen a galaxy of pain put upon us, the 80 percent, by

In December, less than a month after the American Studies Association adopted a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions because of what the ASA described as Israel’s persistent violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people, its severe restrictions on the academic freedom afforded to the Palestinian people, and, in general, its continued violations of international humanitarian law, more than 250 presidents of American universities issued statements condemning the ASA resolution with some threatening to dissociate their universities with ASA.

Shoot, yeah, ending another quarter teaching at another college, here in WA state, and, whew, of course the Chomsky’s and Giroux’s and Hedges of the world DO NOT get it.
Think of faculty in the trenches, working with youth, in my case, a whole load of high school students in a community college swap program called Running Start. We take juniors and seniors out of their high schools, they take college courses, and they get high school credit AND college credit.