A guest post by Henry Giroux
x-posted: truthout.org

In 1977 I took my first job in higher education at Boston University. One reason I went there was because Howard Zinn was teaching there at the time. As a high-school teacher, Howard's book, Vietnam: the Logic of Withdrawal, published in 1968, had a profound effect on me. Not only was it infused with a passion and sense of commitment that I admired as a high-school teacher and tried to internalize as part of my own pedagogy, but it captured something about the passion, sense of commitment and respect for solidarity that came out of Howard's working-class background. It...

Ebooks are here to stay, but how will you read them?

As sales suggest, dedicated reading devices -- Kindles, Nooks, etc. -- have begun to meet the expectations of leisure readers and business travelers. (Those expectations have been changing as well, after the socialization represented by a quarter-century of reading on screen.)

Providing fast, inexpensive and even free access to many titles, portability, adjustable type, searchable text, and a growing list of other functions, these devices meet many readers' needs on both airplanes and nightstands. 

But these dedicated devices just aren't ready for the prime time of academic and professional use. Limitations and glitches in their annotation functions, difficulties with copying text, and even the need to mimic the paperback book experience present real issues for the scholar, student, lawyer, and...

The stark contrast between recent imaginative actions by students and the decades of poor data, bad analysis, and foot-dragging by most academic institutions suggests a possibility. Could AAUP and the disciplinary associations become the next target for the more radical students?

For today's grads, socially conscious unionism no longer represents the left wing of political possibility. Instead it's a launching pad from which they can surpass the limits to the imagination of a previous generation.

Take the AAUP. I believe we represent low-hanging fruit for the rising generation of students and contingent faculty. We are a democratic association with simple procedures. Occupying the slate with insurgent graduate student candidates can be accomplished using a simple petition process. A few thousand votes -- the graduate employees on two or three campuses -- could shape...

OK, let's imagine the impossible of total supply-side control. Clamp off admissions to every doctoral program in history immediately and what happens?

They all keep pumping out new Ph.D.'s at contemporary levels for 10 years. Scratch that. They actually pump out higher levels, because fewer of those enrolled will drop out, believing that they have better chances. So that keeps the "supply" at status quo rates for, say, 13 to 15 years. Then of course there's all the underemployed circling the drain. They're good for at least another five years' supply.

Another thing. Young people being so clever, they'll find ways around that job czar and the gerontocracy, enrolling -- as so many already do -- in American Studies, cultural studies, women's and ethnic studies. So while history is choking off "supply," the "competition" will continue merrily.

So even...

My piece questioning the supply-side bent to the American Historical Association's 2010 job report has gotten thoughtful replies by historiann, Alan Baumler, Jonathan Rees, Ellen Schrecker, Sandy Thatcher and others, both at my home blog and here at Brainstorm.

I really appreciate these thoughts, and want to emphasize how much I respect Townsend's work for AHA over the years, including his parsing of the data on many fronts-especially "privilege," which I believe informs his diss as well -- or I'd probably have come on a...

A funny thing happened on the way to the AHA this year -- American Historical Association staffer Robert B. Townsend issued his annual report on tenure-track employment in the field. Unsurprisingly, he concluded that holders of freshly minted doctorates face grim prospects. What raised my eyebrows -- and those of many others doing scholarship in academic labor -- was his insistence that the labor market for faculty in history is a matter of an "oversupply" of persons holding doctorates, and that the profession needs to control "the supply side of the market," i.e., "cut the number of students" in doctoral programs. 

This is the sort of thing that used to get said all the time by disciplinary-association staffers -- as what I call part of a "second wave" of thinking about academic labor, emerging out of discredited supply-side thought dating back to the Reagan...

Bérubé How many submissions did you receive for The Institution of Literature?
Williams 385, not counting the nine essays you submitted, eight of which sucked, if you don't mind my saying so.
Bérubé Not at all. I totally respect your opinion when it comes to essays of mine that suck.
Williams Well, they did. As did many of the 65 essays I accepted, 38 of which I had to rewrite.
Lyon That sounds like a lot.
Williams Yeah. I take editing seriously.
Bérubé Well, how much rewriting did you do? We're talking line edits, right?
Williams F--k no. I rewrote those motherf--kers from scratch.
Bérubé Really? What did their authors say...

x-posted: howtheuniversityworks.com

Several hundred students gathered at the Oakland courthouse Monday to protest the filing of felony burglary charges against protesters last week, then began an impromptu march over to the University of California's Office of the President (UCOP), the building from which Mark Yudof directs the entire UC system. About 70 members of the crowd pushed past police and gained entry by a rear door of the building, according to at least one report, including photographs taken from a cellphone. 

During the ensuing sit-in, students demanded to meet with Yudof, and eventually were met by two staffers who apparently admitted earning salaries of between $250,000 and $350,000.

Follow the Berkeley standoff via microblog. Best updates on California occupations here; best strike and breaking media from UPTE; and all other UC news at Newfield et al's place here. Update 5pm PST: Berkeley police turned off the campus wireless and sent in the SWAT team: the last transmission was the microblogger recording SWAT smashing the hinges off the doors. Image of the cops bursting in can be found here.

Latest: reports of 40 UC-B students arrested, 1 seriously injured. Update 530 pm: it appears that UC Davis is reoccupied, with as many...

x-posted: howtheuniversityworks.com

Arrests of 52 students at UC Davis and others at UCLA ended one-day occupations at both places, and at San Francisco State, but a new occupation has begun at Berkeley, where the occupiers report that police beat and pepper-sprayed students to re-take the building's first floor. Students appear to hold the second floor at this time. Two buildings remain occupied by hundreds of students at UC-Santa Cruz, which has been the...