Cat Warren

AAUP Names New Academe Editor

The AAUP has named Cat Warren, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, as editor of Academe. She will replace Paula Krebs, a professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. The Academe editor retains his or her faculty position while also working with AAUP staff members to produce the magazine.

E-mail from Dennis

For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom. Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.

From the Editor: The Art of Blowing Smoke and the Craft of Reporting

In the mid-1980s, I worked in a newsroom perched on the frigid plateau of Wyoming, where the snow, natives said, never melted. The wind just chased it around until it got all wore out. The managing editor had a libertarian streak married to a mischievous contrarian streak. We adored each other and argued over just about everything. We were as one only on the subject of the then U.S. representative from Wyoming, Dick Cheney.

From the Editor: The Conveyor Belt to Nowhere

Communications theorist James W. Carey noted that the world has always seemed on the verge of imploding. “The shadow of the Apocalypse is cast across all our sophisticated imaginings.”

Carey was too sophisticated and occasionally dark of mood himself to believe that the apocalypse was merely a minor demon that could be called forth for comfort, then dismissed.

From the Editor: What We Owe Students

Amazing sea-monkeys. X-ray specs. Invisible goldfish that remain invisible, absolutely as promised.

From the Editor: Assessment, Accountability, and Albatrosses

By the time you read this, in the Indian summer of our discontent, BP probably will have finished its static kill and relief wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eager students will certainly be headed back into classrooms at the University of California, Berkeley, now home to what is believed to be the largest public-private research consortium in the country. Only a tiny handful of those students may have access to the proprietary, private biofuel research labs of BP, leveraged by public money and located on a public university’s campus.

Big Food, Big Agra, and the Research University

Food scientist Marion Nestle talks with Academe about conflicts of interest between food companies and academics, the difference between food products and food, and the problem with pomegranates.

From the Editor: Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Even in the face of increasingly cataclysmic news for the humanities, and despite having two university degrees in underperforming esoterica—that is to say, French—I still feel defiant instead of resigned.

And yet. What a bloodied state we’re in.

From the Editor: Surviving Hurricanes 101

As we batten down the hatches, hunker down, and rethink all our priorities in public higher education, I’m reminded of the similarities of preparing for a hurricane in North Carolina: Water, check. Batteries, check. Bottles of decent wine, check.

And don’t forget the good media coverage. Sure, it sounds more superstructure than base. Less central to survival. And obviously, harder to come by, as I’m not counting the small army of reporters on wind-whipped beaches, wearing designer anoraks, shouting into their mikes, sea foam blowing into their faces.

Accountability, Bureaucratic Bloat, and Federal Funding of Higher Education

Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, chair of the House subcommittee on higher education, talked with Academe in April about why she believes higher education should not receive federal dollars and why higher education will need to "prove its worth" in the future.

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