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Higher Education

On Death And Dying As A Black Studies Professor At Portland State University

November 17, 2019 Ethan Johnson, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Last Winter, fairly soon after the Portland State Board of Trustees, an unelected group of overwhelmingly white men, voted to arm the PSU police force, the first person they shot and killed was Jason Washington, a Black person, married and a father of two. A fight broke out in front of a bar on campus, he was carrying a gun which he was permitted to carry, it fell out in the fight and when he tried to grab it the cops shot and killed him.  As is usually the case, the rule of impunity prevailed here and no one was held accountable in any substantive way. The struggle against arming the police force was strong on campus and overwhelmingly students and faculty expressed they did not want an armed police force on campus.  

Power To Disrupt: Limits And Possibilities Of Campus Sit-Ins

November 7, 2019 Jason Koslowski, Roarmag.org , ,
College campuses are systems of capitalist domination: of workers, students and surrounding communities. But campus revolts have been on the rise in recent years. In the US, for instance, as the university system comes to rely more and more on cheap, precarious labor, teacher and graduate student union struggles have been on the rise. As public funds for colleges are slashed, tuitions increase, and campuses become key sites for fascist recruitment among disillusioned youth, many students are pushing back in occupations, walk-outs, demonstrations and other actions.

The PSC-CUNY Contract—The Case For Voting NO

November 5, 2019 By Charlie Post, Portside.org , , ,
This is one of two contrasting viewpoints posted to Portside Labor today about the PSC (AFT) tentative agreement with CUNY, covering 30,000 faculty (including 12,000 adjuncts), professional and graduate employees. Over the past year and a half, the US has seen a revival of the strike. While increasingly drawing in workers across the public and private sectors, educational workers have been at the center of the new strike wave. Starting with the illegal and unofficial West Virginia public school teachers’ strike in February 2018, education workers in both K-12 and higher education have withdrawn their labor and forced bureaucrats and politicians across the US to raise wages...

Universities Are Bowing To Israeli Pressure And Treating Protests Of Israel As A Hate-Crime

October 30, 2019 Philip Giraldi, Americanfreepress.net , , , , ,
The Israel lobby in the United States and its counterparts in Europe have been paying particular attention to curtailing the activities of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS). This is because BDS, which is non-violent and based on established human rights principles, is extremely appealing to college students, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Israel, which promotes its own largely fictional narrative about itself, is reluctant to allow any competing stories about its foundation and current activities...

Over 350 Faculty Members Have Declared That They Refuse To Be Intimidated By The Trump Administration Over Palestine

October 21, 2019 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss.net , , ,
Over 350 faculty members have signed a petition supporting Palestinian rights and declaring that they won’t be intimidated by the Trump administration’s recent targeting of Middle East studies programs on campus. The petition was circulated by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in response to the Department of Education (DOE) carrying out an investigation over a campus conference on Gaza that occurred last year. This past March, the Consortium for Middle East Studies (a joint program between the University of North Carolina and Duke University) held a conference called “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities.”

The CIA Goes HBCU

October 11, 2019 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com , ,
The Southern University System has opened its arms to the CIA with an agreement  to allow the agency to recruit operatives and shape classroom workshops and curriculum on the system’s five historically Black campuses in Louisiana. According to a press release featuring the smiling faces of Southern University president-chancellor Ray Belton and agency operatives, the super-spooks hope to “foster ongoing relationships with key university staff and personnel” and gain access to “a qualified and diverse applicant pool.”

A Boom In Renewables Education As Scotland Upskills

September 29, 2019 David Leask, Herald Scotland. , , ,
A new study has revealed the sheer volume of training underway as the country upskills for climate emergency, new statistics reveal. The research, the first of its kind, showed an “enormous range of courses” on offer from Borders to Highlands. And more than a third of the students taking up the opportunity to work in the green industrial revolution are women. The new figures were calculated by industry lobby Scottish Renewables using a series of Freedom of Information requests. Thirty one higher education institutions are offering courses, ranging from Energy Finance and Policy at the University of Edinburgh) and Countryside Management at Scotland’s Rural College to Tourism Sustainability and Climate Change at the University of Glasgow and Engineering Systems at Dundee and Angus College.

Opposition To Trump’s Migration Deal Has Sparked A Growing Student Occupation In Guatemala

August 8, 2019 Jeff Abbott, Wagingnonviolence.org , , , ,
Late in the afternoon on July 29, students from Guatemala’s only public university, the University of San Carlos, took control of the university’s museum in Guatemala City’s historic center. Their goal was to block the country’s congress from holding sessions there, as the congressional building undergoes remodeling. “The facilities of the university are part of our heritage. Here great thinkers were formed,” said Lenina García, the general secretary of the Association of University Students Oliverio Castañeda de León, or AEU.

Reparations And The Student Debt Wars

August 7, 2019 By John O'Kane, Counterpunch.org , ,
The public college and university system in California was tuition-free during the sixties and into the seventies when the baby boomers were attending college in record numbers. Favorable budgets helped stoke the demand and new campuses were built to accommodate this explosion, propelled by an inclusive ethos special to this left-liberal era where a different breed of Democrats governed. This trend, also evident nationwide, revived the spirit of the free school movement popular in the early 19th century that encouraged the creation of literate citizens for a more vital democracy.

U. Michigan Students Hold ‘Die-In’ To Call For Action Against Climate Change

August 5, 2019 Staff, Thecollegefix.com , ,
Approximately fifty University of Michigan students and faculty, as well as local residents, laid on the floor at the school’s Museum of Art last week to bring attention to the (dire) consequences of climate change. Hosted by the UM Museum of Art and Ann Arbor Climate Mobilization, the event had participants “die” for exactly eleven minutes to “highlight the role time plays in the issue.” According to The Michigan Daily, the die-in coincided with the exhibit “The World to Come: Art in the Age of the Anthropocene.”

Wealthy Parents Give Up Child Custody For College Financial Aid

July 31, 2019 By Jodi S. Cohen and Melissa Sanchez, Propublica.org ,
Dozens of suburban Chicago families, perhaps many more, have been exploiting a legal loophole to win their children need-based college financial aid and scholarships they would not otherwise receive, court records and interviews show. Coming months after the national “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, this tactic also appears to involve families attempting to gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive and expensive college admissions system. Parents are giving up legal guardianship of their children during their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent.

Business School Graduates — Don’t Work For Billionaires

June 13, 2019 By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org ,
Congratulations, graduates, on your hard work over the last several years. By now, though, you’re surely feeling pressure about your next steps. You may have debt, parents that made big sacrifices, or well-off families that expect you to live like them. You may feel pressure to take a job that promises status or mobility — and not to mention a paycheck. Harvard Business school grads, for instance, are now landing jobs with starting pay of over $160,000. Even so, you’ll no doubt weigh ethical considerations as you make career choices.

Help Today’s College Students As We Did For Previous Generations

May 23, 2019 By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org , ,
When I speak on college campuses, I ask students to write the amount of debt they anticipate graduating with on a slip of paper. In a recent class of 25 undergraduates at Boston College, just eight will graduate without debt, either because of full scholarships or family wealth. For the rest, an imposing debt looms — $40,000 on average, but with six reporting more than $150,000. Can you imagine being 22 and having $150,000 in debt? This is generational abuse. Previous generations were propelled forward by free or very low-cost higher education at land-grant universities and robust free college systems in states like California and New York.

“No Justice. No Peace. No Private Police.”

May 12, 2019 Staff, Aclu-md.org , , ,
“No Justice. No Peace. No Private Police,” was a chant that rang through the Charles Village and Waverly neighborhoods last Wednesday. On the 300th “West Wednesday,” John Hopkins University students and community members gathered together to rally against JHU’s planned private police force and contracts to train employees of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. While dozens of campus police watched ominously from the sidelines, people marched peacefully in the streets and then rallied inside JHU’s administration building.

7 Arrested After Police Raid Sit-in Against Hopkins Private Police

May 11, 2019 Jaisal Noor, Therealnews.com , ,
The university had warned protesters they were subject to arrest after they took over and chained themselves to the building on May 1. Just days earlier, activist Tawanda Jones, whose brother was killed by police in 2013, was threatened with legal action over her participation in the protests (https://therealnews.com/columns/baltimore-activist-threatened-with-legal-action-over-participation-in-hopkins-protests). In a statement, the university cited “grave concerns about the unsafe circumstances in and around Garland Hall and followed multiple offers of amnesty from university officials and warnings from the police if the protesters left the building.”
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