I think this Halloween, I’ll go as Edward Said. Professors of Middle Eastern culture seem to have just become the newest national bogeymen in an election season marked by a conveniently renewed vendetta against “elites.”

Forget for the moment the malicious nonsense about Rashid Khalidi being doled out by the Republican candidates, a sour ragout of mendacity and meanness. Two paragraphs leap out in today’s New York Times article about Rashid Khalidi’s introduction to the politics of character assassination. If you are looking for a textbook definition of guilt by association in...

There was a fascinating and unprecedented continuum of women represented by major players during this last tour around the political theme park. We were presented with the Uber-feminine, as embodied by Sarah Palin, who was of course in direct opposition to Hillary Clinton, a woman who wore her Bluestocking colors proudly even after she was defeated by Barack Obama in the primaries.

The major players lined up as follows: Sarah Palin, Cindy McCain, Michelle Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton. They moved our eyes from red heels to comfortable wedges, from skanky-tight skirts to pantsuits, from beehive hairdos to blunt-cut pageboys.

I thought it might be intriguing to prepare a quiz, and to see where the Babes of Politics might fall in terms of their entirely theoretical and wholly invented responses to these multiple choice questions, questions...

When I stepped up from the presidency of George Washington University to become a professor, people asked me what new adventures I was considering. First and foremost, I replied, is a return to the classroom, to engage with graduate students about policy issues of higher education, my professional passion. (I have been doing that.) Second is to write a book, an activity that will move me away from the immediacy of daily decision making toward the more reflective world of analysis. (In 2008 two have been published: BMOC, Simon and Schuster and Letters to the Next President of the United States, Korn Ferry Institute). After that, I’m open, I said to the inquiring minds.

I’ve been fortunate to invest my time in many activities: some local engagements with civic organizations; and others with a broader reach — working with Korn Ferry...

Yeah, young people are online, but do you think they’re really reading newspapers there?

In the comments on the previous entry on newspaper circulation, David Yamada mentioned an ominous sign of the times: The Christian Science Monitor’s decision to drop its daily print edition. The Monitor will only go to mailboxes as a weekly magazine, while the daily version will appear online. PC World terms it “the first of what could be a series of print newspaper closings,” noting that circulation had been dropping...

“Sam, the World’s Ugliest Dog,” by Flickr user spierzchala

I told my husband this morning that I thought I’d post a little piece on ugliness. “Go ahead and use my picture,” he said. I chuckled, but then thought how unlikely it would be for anyone who truly thought he were ugly to find much fun in such a joke.

Ugliness, I’m learning, is now a trendy topic. On the popular-culture side, there’s the TV show Ugly Betty, as well as a host of ugly critters, monsters, and villains popping up all over the movie world. On the serious side, sociologists and psychologists are studying “uglyism”...

“Let there be light.” God says those words, according to the book of Genesis, and the rest is human history.

For God, merely talking brings things into existence. His speech is ontology.

Watching hard-lined partisans this election season, the kinds of supporters doggedly unwilling to let the tiniest shreds of reasoned (or reasonable) analysis spoil their talking-pointed punditry, seems like a secularized version of that Biblically foundational moment.

Many pundits and partisans appear to imagine themselves with similar God-like powers, with the ability to speak things into being. It is as though simply saying something, and saying it definitely, makes it politically true — at least true enough, the hope is, to win over some of those voters still purportedly on the electoral fence. As I’ve argued in one of my previous...

University presidents have the current economic crisis very much on our minds. Higher education is affected less severely by these difficult economic times than other enterprises in our society. Even so, we are affected more than most may realize.

At a recent meeting with presidential colleagues I summarized the many ways in which the financial downturn impacts higher education. Most of the impacts turn out to be similar from one institution to another irrespective of geography, size, or public/private status. Here is a recap of the top concerns.

• Liquidity: The availability of cash for payroll and other operating expenses due to The Commonfund’s restrictions on access to funds being held by Wachovia bank.

• Student Aid: As families feel the financial crunch, we can expect an increase in requests.

• Lending: Some banks...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

Episode #3 of John Lenin’s series Allday University Starring Adjunct Alice.

Follow the link to view the cartoons in more convenient strip versions.

The top 10 percent of American households represent over 70 percent of U.S. net worth (and 80 percent of stock ownership). The bottom 90 percent splits the rest.

By the way: ever ask yourself how the degree-inappropriate salaries of higher education shape the racial composition of the professoriate? The chart below contains all the information you need to figure it out for yourself. Which group is best positioned to subsidize not just...

I have a number of bizarre compulsions. One is to read the curriculum-reform documents prepared at leading institutions. We all know bad jokes about curriculum committees, but the most naïve among us (I am a leader here) live in hope that, somehow, new truths about teaching and learning will emerge.

It was in this spirit that I downloaded the recent (September, 2008) report entitled The Curriculum at Forty: A Plan for Strengthening the College Experience at Brown. This is an ambitious effort by seven faculty members, four undergraduate students, and three senior deans (perhaps also faculty members). Unlike less impressive but more highly publicized efforts at Harvard, this report seems altogether to have escaped the notice of the press, perhaps because it is...

I’m glad to see McCain and Obama campaigning in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states with big cities and lots of people. But why haven’t they spent any time at all (except to raise money) in several of the other large states: California, Texas, and New York, to name the three largest, along with Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois? Why, for that matter, haven’t we seen them in my neck of the woods — in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Tennessee? Or in New England states such as Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island?

The answer is the electoral college and, to my mind, it represents the chief defect of that system of electing the president. Except in Maine and Nebraska, a presidential candidate receives all of a state’s electoral votes merely by carrying it — it doesn’t matter if he...