Students

Nothing, it seems, is too ridiculous for Nick Clegg, UK Deputy Prime Minister, to contemplate. See him in this painful video ‘Nick Clegg welcomes the Jewish Manifesto‘ aimed at EU election candidates and voters.
Fortunately Clegg received a bloody nose yesterday in the EU elections. His infatuation with the EU and all its rotten works caused his party (the Liberal Democrats) to be almost wiped out at the polls. His days as leader are probably numbered.

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).

The state of English Language Teaching (ELT) (and teaching content, electives overall) is going through a serious, almost radical, transformation.  Long gone are the days where union chapters, building reps and others who represent a teaching staff have the backing of their affiliate or parent union for support.  No more do we see teachers of all areas praised for working miracles with society’s problem students/children. Forever gone are the school days filled with bright eyes, smiling faces, recess, and an obvious love of learning.

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!

Late last month, over 100 teachers, students, and parents from across the country gathered in Denver for the United Opt Out National Spring Action, a conference aimed at growing the resistance to corporate education reform and high stakes standardized testing across the nation. Throughout the weekend, the education activists brainstormed and planned in area-focused work groups, interspersed with talks from, among others, a Finnish teacher and education scholar, a parent turned education activist, and a high school senior.

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]

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.