Academe Article

Access in the Academy

When Alex Lubet, professor of music at the University of Minnesota, returned to his job after surgery on his neck, he found that he fell between the cracks of the university’s disability-accommodation policies. As Peter Monaghan reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, although Lubet was “permanently partially disabled,” he discovered he was “not entitled to workplace accommodations.” Lubet was provided “adaptive office equipment” but not consulted about his needs. As a consequence, he could rarely use what was provided.

Information Technology Wants to Be Free

Sometimes I hear through the grapevine, in the cohesive community where my regional comprehensive university is located, of a recent graduate who is using calculus in an unauthorized way. Perhaps this person is an engineer optimizing a process in one of our remaining local industries, an executive maximizing profit in a new venture, or even a soccer mom or dad doodling on a fast-food wrapper, trying to figure out the best location for defensive players in terms of how much of the field they can control.

Sue U.

“What business are we in?” Christie Hefner—president, chair, and CEO of Playboy Enterprises from 1988 through 2009—challenged attendees at the 2012 annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), being held just outside of Disneyland, to ask themselves this deceptively simple question. While Playboy’s business no doubt would make Mickey Mouse blush, Hefner’s question to those on the front lines of the university patenting and licensing community bears studied reflection by a much wider audience.

Media Matters

When the news broke in the New York Times in August 2009 that Yale University Press had decided to remove twelve Danish cartoon images of the prophet Mohammed from The Cartoons That Shook the World, a forthcoming book by Brandeis political scientist Jytte Klausen, I felt that the AAUP had only three or four hours to issue a statement if we wanted to shape the story as it spread through the media. 

From Combat to Campus

Soldiers are returning from war to college. For several years I did not even notice them. That seems to be the way they like it. The 336 veterans who are now students on the Bridgewater State University campus in Massachusetts are almost invisible. By my calculation, the number of veterans at BSU has increased by 65 percent since 2009–10.

The World through an Interdisciplinary Lens

Scholars and teachers have long struggled to respond to the growing demand for interdisciplinary approaches to complex social issues. They come to the table with their own disciplinary perspectives (scholars more rigidly than students, perhaps), but they also recognize the limitations of investigating social issues through a single disciplinary lens. They have learned, in short, that it is not sufficient to approach the pressing issues of our time from just one perspective.

Take Me To Your Leader

Enhancing Leadership in Colleges and Universities: A Case Approach. Arthur Sandeen. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 2011.  

“To Serve a Larger Purpose”: Engagement for Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education. John Saltmarsh and Matthew Hartley, eds. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.

Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions. Rudolph H. Weingartner. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: American Council on Education and Rowman and Littlefield, 2011.

The Climate-Change Wars

Global Warming and Political Intimidation: How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists as the Earth Heated Up. Raymond S. Bradley. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.

From the Editor: No Entrance

Three years ago, I became the editor of Academe. This is my last issue. Editing the magazine has been enormously rewarding.

Though I’m a pessimist, I often remain cheerful. Even when I think the glass is two-thirds empty, I can find ways to enjoy whatever juice is left in the bottom. Still, I’m shocked by how much worse off higher education is now than it was when I became editor. By almost every measure. Of all of the things that dismay and exercise me, of the multitude of scandals and crises in higher education, one subsumes them all.

Faculty Forum: Cary Nelson: An Appreciation

I was elected to the national Council of the AAUP in 2005, just as Cary Nelson was running for the presidency. My first year on the Council was intensely dismaying. Academic freedom was under threat, the culture wars had been reheated in the aftermath of September 11, and David Horowitz was urging state legislatures to pass his “Academic Bill of Rights” to combat what he considered leftist indoctrination in the classroom. Tenure was being eroded by the overuse and exploitation of faculty hired off the tenure track.

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