Education

By Belle Chesler | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Do you hear that silence? That’s the absence of footsteps echoing through our nation’s public school hallways. It’s the silence of teaching in a virtual space populated with students on mute who lack a physical presence. It’s the crushing silence of those who are now missing, who […]

Israel Lobbies

Is Sympathy for the Plight of Occupied Palestinians winning the American University?

Al-Shabaka

By Hatem Bazian | – ( Al Shabakah) – Palestine Legal recently published a report noting that the majority of suppression of Palestine advocacy in the US targets students and faculty. In particular, 89% of such incidents occurred on college campuses in 2014, and 74% in 2019. While these statistics illuminate the current struggle that […]

Donald Trump

Why America’s anti-Science and Anti-Intellectual Attitudes doom it to Coronavirus “Pearl Harbor”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this generation’s “Pearl Harbor.” But while Pearl Harbor was a plot of far right wing Japanese generals to get the US fleet out of the way so they […]

Education

Teachers with Macs: How to Film yourself Narrating your Powerpoint Presentation and Post it for Your Class

Juan Cole

Update: The Macs don’t have a built in sound system that will work with the screen recording function in Quicktime, so it may be necessary to download Soundflower or the equivalent to make the below instructions work. If you still have trouble, I have found that Screenflick for Mac also works. You can just tell […]

Bill of Rights

From Stoning Gays to Endorsing Slavery: The Problem with Bible Classes in State Schools

James A. Haught

(Syndicated to Informed Comment) – Here in Appalachia’s Bible Belt, conservatives in the Legislature want to force all West Virginia public high schools to teach Bible classes, as occurs in several other Republican-controlled states. I wonder how such classes handle Bible topics like these: First, the Bible decrees that gay males must be killed. Leviticus […]

Education

With College Students Drowning in Debt, the Best Solution is Gov’t-Backed Free Tuition for All

John Buell

(Special to Informed Comment) – Some developments in this campaign have been predictable. Once Senators Sanders and Warren had expressed support for free post secondary education it was inevitable that other candidates would have to jump in. College costs have grown rapidly in recent years and the jobs that colleges promise—when available at all—have failed […]

Education

How the Education Department Is Ripping Off Defrauded Students

Jill Richardson

Students who got defrauded by for-profit colleges were going to get loan forgiveness — until Betsy DeVos showed up.

censorship

No Premature Burial for Academic Freedom: Speaking up in Ann Arbor

contributors

By Chandler Davis | – (Informed Comment) – Let me make a case for urgency of defense of academic freedom. I’m not addressing the whole University community. Surely there are some who don’t have any concern for academic freedom as the AAUP understands it. Some who think for example that it was honorable and right […]

Education

Trump v. Duke U.-UNC: Why the Study of Cultures is Essential to our National Security

The Conversation

By Nicholas Tampio | After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a commission formed to figure out why the attacks occurred. One of the culprits, according to the commission’s 9/11 report, was “lack of imagination.” With few exceptions, the report stated, government officials could not imagine that Osama bin Laden and his affiliates, hidden in […]