Student resistance across the nation has surged since 2014, as students protest, demonstrate, and sit-in and die-in against racism on their campuses, and around the broader and parallel issues of students feeling unacknowledged, silenced, and oppressed by their colleges and universities. These protests are not merely symbolic demonstrations of…

In the fall of 2017, the University of Florida (UF) and the city of Gainesville were part of a coda to a terrible event in recent U.S. history: the violent torch-wielding rally of white supremacists and extreme far-right groups in the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three people dead and at least 33 injured. These events…

Changes in the academy have coincided with social shifts, community growth, student needs, and global conversions. During the 1990s, online learning began to receive national attention, and since 2010, online course enrollment has consistently increased. In 2014, 28 percent of all students attending postsecondary, degree-granting institutions were…

Right-to-work (RTW) laws neither provide opportunity for gainful employment nor a higher standard of living. In truth, by ending a union's ability to charge administrative fees to employees who benefit from their collectively bargained contract, these laws aim to weaken unions and silence workers. They are designed to help employers, not workers.…

While the existence of affinity initiatives, like Harvard's Black Commencement--a commencement exercise intended solely for its Black students--may seem to perpetuate the social isolation of minority students, the opposite is true. By addressing minority feelings of otherness and exclusion, these measures not only strengthen individual groups, but…

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

The euphemism that Florida, the nation's third most populous and politically powerful state, is a battleground is an apt description--and more than just every four years. Every year, every day in the state's capital, Florida has become high ground for pro-corporate, special-interest lobbyists who seek to instill a far-right legislative and social…

That campuses suffer unacceptable levels of violence is undisputable; they are part of a larger American society in which family, community, and institutional violence far exceed levels found in comparable Western nations. And yet, amid the finger-pointing and scapegoating of students as violent, we note a critical lack of evidence-based analysis,…

In July 2015, on the recommendation of the NEA Executive Committee and the NEA Board of Directors, the NEA Representative Assembly unanimously passed New Business Item B (NBI B), in which NEA declared itself ready to combat "institutional racism." The organization declared the existence of institutional racism and committed to spend more…

David Bordelon identifies himself as one of the majority of Americans who voted to keep Trump out of office. In this article he discusses his confusion by the Tea Party's fixation on welfare fraud, and inability to recognize it in President Trump's behavior. The author says that he can only hope that his confusion will be shared, and progress to…

Collective bargaining and faculty governance are sometimes perceived to be in conflict. Faculty members will debate about whether a specific issue--for example, program consolidations or early college/dual enrollment (where high school students earn college credits taking high school classes taught by high school teachers)--falls under governance…

Higher education is under siege by a barrage of policy initiatives that aim to fundamentally transform the academy. The most visible and most sustained assault has come in the form of funding cuts. Nationally, funding for public higher education was 18 percent lower in 2016 than in 2008, amounting to a $10 billion total disinvestment. In many…

In 2008, in the case of the "District of Columbia vs. Heller," which involved a district law banning most handguns, the U. S. Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment protects citizens' rights to self-defense and that the federal government cannot prohibit guns in homes. Two years later, the Court further made clear that the…

At its most elemental level, dual enrollment--sometimes known as dual credit or concurrent enrollment--enrolls high school students in college-level courses. The exact nature of each dual enrollment program varies from state to state, but generally students earn college credits when they pass their classes. In this article, the author discusses…

Teaching basic reading, writing, and critical thinking skills is immensely gratifying and vitally important work, requiring intelligence, optimism, and humanity. To be able to gain some sliver of understanding with regard to students' attitudes, behaviors, skills, and abilities; to recognize that there exists a multiplicity of possible…