Journalist – Historian – Speaker
This was good news: President Simon Newman of Mount St. Mary’s University resigns. More shortly. https://t.co/PvBNnGYxqe — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 1, 2016 My piece on the illegality of his plan under Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation act was here, for The Establishment. Welcome to the Trumpification of higher ed. There are many reasons …
Thesis: The idea that your students have guns will have a vastly more chilling effect on academic freedom than people asking for trigger warnings, less offensive language, or to be thoughtful about microaggressions. Coming soon from CNN. (Update for new readers. Hi new readers! Here are some of my writing about Trigger Warnings and PC …
Mount St. Mary’s University gave a survey to its incoming class that allegedly was used as a tool to identify the most at-risk members in order to try to drive them from the school. I will have a piece on this with The Establishment soon. Here’s the survey via Scribd. Given its alleged purpose, I find the …
From Vox, Julia Belluz has quite a story. The University of Maryland issued a press release about a new study on the effects of a single brand of chocolate milk on cognitive and motor skill tests in high school athletes. The story, as she documents, is that Fifth Quaker Fresh funded research, the scientists did …
Last year was the year in which white liberal pundits ranted about PC Run Amok. Hua Hsu covered it very well in his piece for The New Yorker, “The Year of the Imaginary Student.” It’s a piece worth reading in its entirety. (Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, has also written two good essays critiquing this …
Over on Chronicle Vitae, a group of students at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign, have written a spectacular piece – “A lecture from the lectured.” They open by citing pieces that sneer at students today for being distracted, boring, and un-intellectually curious, then respond with appropriate scorn. At a university like ours, where thousands …
The lucky winner of this job will be in an excellent position to opine on the Good Life. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida invites applications for the position of lecturer to teach the Humanities Common Course, IUF 1000: What is the Good Life?, to begin August 16, 2016. As …
I have a book review out with postemedieval on a collection of recent books about the state and future of higher education. “Where are we going? Why are we in this handbasket?” is open access. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.– Rahm Emmanuel, Mayor of ChicagoEvery week, another cry of crisis reverberates …
The Chronicle for Higher Education covered the “Save Ashgate” petition and movement, now with over 7000 signatures (which is a huge number for an academic publishing issue). The company has not yet responded to the petitioners, according to Kathleen E. Kennedy, an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University-Brandywine. That silence speaks volumes, she …
Last Wednesday, a group of African-American students staged a public protest against racism on our campus. You can see video and read about it here. They chanted, “Silence no more,” vowing to call out the racism that they saw. As of yesterday, faculty response coalesced around the phrase “Complicit no more.” There will be an …