cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com Emile had a visit with his physician upon our return from Quebec, and at 7 1/2 months, he was up 11 pounds and 11 inches. The eleven inches part is kind of scary when you think about it — 1.5 inches a month!

He also has 3 teeth, nearly 4, and pre-verbalizes, we would like to believe, in both French and English. Just in the past week he’s gone from amiable explorer of space in an eight-foot diameter to I-can-race-across-the-room-before-you-can-blink.

Emile’s credo: Here comes trouble!

That’s him five or six weeks back (2 pounds lighter, 3 inches shorter!)

Speaking of milestones, undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon took notice of the expected passing of minnesota review with a front-page article in The Tartan.

While editor Jeffrey Williams is still taking queries for a new editor and institutional home, most watchers are...

“It seems that anyone who attempts to have a frank discussion about labor and/or capitalism finds themselves staving off the same arguments again and again.”—The Girl Detective @ Alas, a Blog

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

All year long in this space, I’ve been grappling with market fundamentalists (Why doncha go where the Market will pay ya! My big wages and your little wages are fair ‘cause the Market says so! Don’t look at the little pinstriped men behind the curtain!).

So have others trying to suggest what any actual student of economies knows: Markets are social formations, closely and carefully managed by law, power, appropriations, policy, and culture. That includes the system for proletarianizing faculty colloquially and fallaciously known as the “job market” (long since turned into a market in contingent appointments, not jobs).

As the current drama ...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

I’m working on a piece about undergraduate academic freedom that relates changes in campus culture to changes in the culture of schools. One area of particular interest is the medicalization of youth relations with authority. In a previous section, I discussed the 1980 introduction to the DSM IV of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

College faculty will be more familiar with another intersection of pharmacology and curriculum, the widespread diagnosis of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADD and ADHD), and the corresponding prescription of amphetamines and cognate medicines. In 2003, six million American schoolchildren—about 15 percent—took methlphenidate (Ritalin) alone. Methylphenidate has replaced Prozac as the drug defining an entire cohort, with authors beginning to speak of a “Ritalin nation,” a “generation...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

I’m working on a piece about undergraduate academic freedom that relates changes in campus culture to changes in the culture of schools. One area of particular interest is the medicalization of youth relations with authority. In a previous section, I discussed the 1980 introduction to the DSM IV of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

Ritalin appears on college campuses as part of the performance culture of the “winners” in the regime of high-stakes assessment. In a Youth Radio report for the PBS NewsHour, Michelle Jarboe reported on widespread use at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her own usage followed professional-managerial usage patterns: She got her pills from a boyfriend whose parents were both psychiatrists:

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

I’m working on a piece about undergraduate academic freedom that relates changes in campus culture to changes in the culture of schools. One area of particular interest is the medicalization of youth relations with authority. AlterNet’s Bruce Levine, a clinical psychologist, argues that “teenage rebellion has become a medical illness” with the 1980 introduction to the DSM IV of “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD):

Earlier in the summer, I noted some opposition by CUNY faculty serving contingently to the contract proposed by the leadership — a group of folks including Stanley Aronowitz, Barbara Bowen, Marcia Newfield, and others that I regard as friends and mentors: These are the people that brought me into the movement. At the time, they were the insurgent “New Caucus” leading an innovative coalition of graduate employees, contingent faculty and tenure-stream folks fed up with the business unionism of the Polishook crowd. They have made real gains for graduate employees and faculty serving contingently, but not as quickly as we perhaps all hoped. There are real victories in this contract, including substantial raises, health insurance for graduate-student employees, and 100 lines devoted to conversion of faculty serving part-time to tenurable positions.

Nonetheless, faculty serving on a...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

As previously reported in this column, this could be the end for minnesota review.

Editor Jeffrey Williams released this announcement earlier in the week:

If ...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

In honor of Labor Day, very interesting posts by Brainstorm comrades Bauerlein (part one and part two) and Barreca. The posts and ensuing conversations are very much worth a look.

Above, Professors Take the Long Course in Poverty by Melanie Hubbard, St. Petersburg Times, January 6, 2008