\n<\/p>\n
Back in December, I wrote a post titled \u201cWhat Are We Even Doing Here?\u201d in which I discussed some of the head-scratching moves among some higher ed institutions, moves that seemed so at odds with the purported mission of higher ed that you couldn\u2019t help but wonder if these schools were just planning on punting on the mission altogether.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t plan on this being a series, but in perusing Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s news stories on a daily basis\u2014as I do\u2014my frequent reaction to some of these stories is, \u201cThat\u2019s nuts!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNuts\u201d as in cuckoo, bonkers, batshit, the kind of thing that if we pause and think for even a moment is entirely inconsistent with colleges and universities doing the work most of us believe they\u2019re meant to do.<\/p>\n The sheer number of these insults to common sense has the potential to numb us to how nuts these things are, but I\u2019m here to say, this stuff is nuts! <\/p>\n Let\u2019s not lose sight of this fact.<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida Introduces \u2018Sanitized\u2019 Sociology Textbook,\u201d by Kathryn Palmer<\/p>\n As part of Ron DeSantis\u2019s war on diversity, faculty at Florida International University are required to adopt an open-source textbook that \u201cnow makes only cursory mentions of important sociological concepts regarding race, gender, sexuality and other topics that have drawn Republican ire.\u201d<\/p>\n The textbook is the by-product of a process that involved faculty from across different public institutions in Florida as part of a \u201cworking group\u201d tasked to create a textbook that would pass political muster and prevent the deletion of sociology as a core general education requirement. I understand why faculty may have thought this was a needle they could thread, but the end result is disastrous and shows how accommodating fanatics means you\u2019re never going to run out of inches (or feet or miles) that they insist you have to give. <\/p>\n How nuts is this? Extremely, extremely nuts. This is often framed as part of a culture war battle\u2014e.g., DeSantis\u2019s \u201cwar on woke\u201d\u2014but that is not what is happening here. A partisan project to direct the course materials that are allowed to be used is not just a violation of academic freedom rights, but an assault on core democratic values. <\/p>\n \u201cTenure Eliminated at Oklahoma Colleges,\u201d by Emma Whitford<\/p>\n Via executive order, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt \u201cdecreed the end of tenure\u201d for faculty at regional public and community colleges.<\/p>\n This is a kind of kill strike for what was previously a slow death through increased adjunctification over time. It\u2019s a declaration that precariously employed, vulnerable faculty are meant to be controlled, rather than being given the freedom to do their jobs to the best of their ability. It is a dark vision for how education works and how people are incentivized to do their best work. <\/p>\n It\u2019s pretty darn nuts, but it\u2019s a kind of nuttiness that we\u2019ve almost become inured to because it\u2019s so pervasive.<\/p>\n To fully appreciate how nuts this is, I\u2019ll point you to the work of my Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom colleague Isaac Kamola, who did an annotation of Governor Stitt\u2019s executive order, identifying the doublespeak at work.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018A Barrage of Bills\u2019 Would Overhaul Higher Ed in Iowa\u2014If They Actually Pass,\u201d by Ryan Quinn<\/p>\n The degree of bonkersness is contingent on whether or not these bills pass, but if they do, whoa, nelly\u00a0\u2026 totally nuts!<\/p>\n I encourage you to read the article to appreciate the full scope of what\u2019s happening here, but in essence it is an attempt to reorder higher education in the state through legislative fiat by taking wild swings at adopting pet initiatives that will be both unworkable, and, if implemented, will hamstring institutions in ways that will ultimately punish students. <\/p>\n Perhaps this is the goal, but consider just one bill from the long list: \u201cMake universities liable for 10\u00a0percent of students\u2019 defaulted loans.\u201d This so-called accountability measure is, in reality, a short route to ceasing to admit low-income students who are at much higher financial risk over all. <\/p>\n State legislatures have an important role to play in creating the conditions that allow public institutions to thrive. Iowa\u2019s Legislature is taking that responsibility and substituting half-baked YOLO schemes for what needs to be thoughtful oversight.<\/p>\n Nuts!<\/p>\n \u201cTexas A&M Closes Women\u2019s and Gender Studies Programs,\u201d by Kathryn Palmer, and \u201cPlato Censored as Texas A&M Carries Out Course Review,\u201d by Emma Whitford<\/p>\n These are just the latest incidents at Texas A&M, following last semester\u2019s firing of instructor Melissa McCoul for the sin of doing her job, an incident that also took out the university president. Texas A&M has become something other than a university as we traditionally consider the category. <\/p>\n The people in charge there, including the state\u2019s politicians who are hell-bent on destroying the prestige of their existing universities, have gone completely nuts.<\/p>\n \u201cUNC Administrators Can Now Secretly Record Faculty,\u201d by Emma Whitford<\/p>\n I can\u2019t think of a more conducive atmosphere for intellectual exchange than knowing that at any time your administration can be taping you without your knowledge or permission, can you? <\/p>\n The guideline that this can be done for \u201cany lawful purpose\u201d essentially allows any surveillance outside of the campus bathrooms.<\/p>\n This is part of a larger program of signaling that professors are to mind their p\u2019s and q\u2019s, as a previous decision declared that course syllabi will be considered public records and a revision to UNC\u2019s own guidelines for academic freedom now says that material \u201cclearly unrelated to the course description\u201d is prohibited.<\/p>\n My guess is that many will resign themselves to this new reality and try to keep their heads down so they can continue to do some semblance of their work, but we should not lose sight of how nuts this is.<\/p>\n These events, as well as the ones I rounded up in the previous post, point to a reality I think we\u2019re going to have to deal with\u2014that there is no past version of public higher education to go back to should we break the fever of Trump and the state-level versions like Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida. <\/p>\n In truth, that past some believe we should return to never existed, or if it did, it\u2019s been hollowed out for many years. These folks have just come around to raze the empty structures. <\/p>\n Fortunately, there are groups forming that are starting to organize around the challenges we\u2019re facing. I like to think one I\u2019m involved with as a fellow, the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, is operating in this spirit. If you\u2019re interested in this work, CDAF is currently soliciting applications for its next group of fellows.<\/p>\n There\u2019s additional good news on this front following the announcement of the launch for the Alliance for Higher Education, a national coalition organized to protect essential freedoms from government interference.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t have to let the bonkers stuff keep happening. There is a future where we have the freedoms and support we need for higher ed institutions, and the people who intersect with them, to thrive.<\/p>\n Part of securing that future is maintaining the ability to say loudly and clearly when something is nuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in December, I wrote a post titled \u201cWhat Are We Even Doing Here?\u201d in which I discussed some of the head-scratching moves among some higher ed institutions, moves that seemed so at odds with the purported mission of higher ed that you couldn\u2019t help but wonder if these schools were just planning on punting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[495,150,23078],"class_list":{"0":"post-44457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-higher","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-unbelievable"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}