This September, public universities in Texas will be required to post on their Web sites detailed syllabi for all undergraduate courses, a curriculum vitae for each regular instructor, a departmental budget report for each course offered, and reports of student course evaluations. According to a new state law, all of this must be "accessible…

The paradigmatic values underlying British and German higher education emphasise personal growth, the wholeness of the individual, intellectual freedom and the pursuit of knowledge, which cumulatively can be viewed as a form of academic essentialism. However, these concepts were generated within a particular cultural and historical context which…

In this article, the author discusses the issues surrounding contingent faculty. Contingent faculty members are central to academe's future because prevailing logics of the market can confuse accountability with accession to any and all "customer" demands; faculty organizations can instead take the opportunity to hold academic managers and…

In another twist in the decades-long battle over evolution's status in public school science classrooms, state legislators are arguing that teachers have a right to raise doubts about that essential scientific theory as a matter of free speech. Similarly worded bills that attempt to protect the right of educators and students to present critiques…

In this article, the authors offer a more humanistic vision of educational community, one that is substantive in content yet flexible in its application to the diverse contexts in which American schooling occurs. In doing so, the authors turn specifically to the nonviolent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and consider what a school…

The historic institution of tenure is rapidly becoming history. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has for almost a century advocated for tenure as the chief guarantor of a faculty member's academic freedom. But today tenure and academic freedom are viewed less and less as crucially intertwined. Academic freedom has widely…

Encouraging greater access to higher education for deserving students, regardless of their socio-economic status, and ensuring that curricula reflect the diversity of human experience have been longstanding priorities for higher education and thus for the Ford Foundation. However, in the wake of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the war on terror, a…

In a warmly received address to Roman Catholic educators, including 200 college presidents, in April, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his "profound gratitude" for the educators' "selfless contributions," which "serve both your country and the church." Pope Benedict's talk also built an intellectual case for academic freedom that is based on a bedrock…

This study investigates how evolution versus intelligent design is handled in the public, private Christian, private Jewish, and Christian Home-school K-12 settings through a review of the current literature and by interviewing teachers in these educational venues. Fourteen public, private, and homeschool educators responded to an interview…

On February 6, 2009, the president of Clark Atlanta University, an historically black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, terminated 55 full-time faculty members without notice. Many of these faculty members had tenure. These individuals, some of whom had worked at the university for over 15 years while making $45,000 a year as associate professors…

Over the past few decades, America's social compact for higher education as a public good has effectively lapsed as government support of higher education has diminished. Given the need for a highly educated workforce in today's knowledge-based global economy, we propose a new compact for higher education that couples increased funding with…

This article investigates some issues related to gender and education based on a qualitative, empirical study of women in higher education in the Toliara region of Madagascar. The focus is on how women's participation in higher education has created changes in gender relations, and how these women have succeeded in achieving higher education. In…

Censorship is a complex question. Studies show a number of reasons teachers refrain from teaching controversial issues. These include: (1) The general "chilling effects" in school and community contexts, characterized by fear of reprisal; (2) Standards and high stakes testing; (3) Insufficient teacher preparation to teach about…

The new Social Studies curriculum recently introduced in Alberta proposes to encourage students to affirm their place as citizens in a democratic society. Grounded in Biesta's (2007) argument that regardless of a Program of Studies' best stated goals and intentions, if a school is not structured democratically the chances of the program being…

This paper is a reflection, on the 10th anniversary of a great work of art. After reviewing some of the global impacts of the Wachowski brothers' highly acclaimed action sci-fi film "The Matrix" (1999-2003), I present a case for the use of the film in critical theory and pedagogy and it's apparent un-interest to such theorists and pedagogues.…