Earlier 20th-century thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Edmund Wilson kept the university and its apparatus at arm's length. Indeed, they often disdained it. They oriented themselves toward an educated public, and, as a result, they developed a straightforward prose and gained a nonprofessional audience. As his reputation grew, Wilson printed up a…

In this article, the author takes his cue for discussions of academic freedom from Simone de Beauvoir as found in her classic text, "The Ethics of Ambiguity." Like other existentialists, de Beauvoir emphasizes that freedom and responsibility are intimately linked. Academic freedom is an ethical responsibility that compels the author to teach and…

Administrations are censured by vote of the AAUP's annual meeting for not observing principles of academic freedom and tenure endorsed by the AAUP and more than two hundred other professional and educational organizations. These principles are set forth in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and in derivative standards…

I apply as theoretical framework the Habermassian principles of "communicative action" and "consensus" through deliberation and reasoning. In particular, I focus on "rational" and "argumentative" communication through which school governance stakeholders could advance arguments and counter-arguments. I…

Freshman student retention has become a major focus in higher education. The loss of incoming students is not only financially burdensome to the institution, but it can be academically and personally discouraging for students. Many theoretical constructs have been applied to the problem of student attrition, including the individual constructs of…

Issues 283 through 289 of "Fast Facts" from the Library Research Service present data collected from libraries in Colorado and throughout the nation. Topics addressed in these "Fast Facts" from 2010 include the relationship between computer access in libraries and use of traditional services, analysis of the third year of data…

A teacher faces hostility from certain colleagues who view his decision to attend a controversial lecture as tantamount to the repudiation of the principle of inclusive education and the rights of students with disabilities. The teacher sees the proposed boycott of the lecture as a form of censorship threatening freedom of inquiry and critical…

In an attempt to enact equitable practices in U.S. public schools, many critical multicultural and anti-racist theorists, researchers, and practitioners strongly suggest that teacher educators move beyond diversity approaches to multicultural education in their teacher preparation programs to address the more uncomfortable issues of power and…

As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on…

Purpose: The ranking of top universities in the world has generated increased interest in the factors that enhance university performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify economic and cultural factors that affect the number of top ranking universities in each country. Design/methodology/approach: This paper first identifies the number of…

The Dutch are missing in any U.S. history textbook, in the content standards, and in the nationally endorsed curriculum. Outside of New York State history classes, there is almost no mention of the Dutch influence in early 17th-century America. Fleeting references to the Netherlands as a staging area for the Pilgrims' famous "Mayflower"…

The First Amendment's guarantee of an independent press that may freely collect and disseminate news is often considered the bedrock of American democracy. Yet more than a century and a half after the "New York Herald's" John Nugent became the first American reporter jailed for refusing to identify a confidential source, reporters…

Two Portuguese children of immigrants were observed over a period of two years within the complex sociolinguistic context of the Luxembourgish multilingual school-system. The data allow the analysis of their relations with the languages they learn at school: Luxembourgish, German, French and Portuguese. The observations focus on the two pupils…

The aim of this article is to inquire into today's social pathologies, i.e. the negative consequences of the developmental processes of society. In a dialogue with Axel Honneth, the article asserts that a shift has occurred in individualization, a shift that implies a fundamental change in social pathologies: Social pathologies no longer derive…

In this article I synthesise and apply elements of political and reading theory to demonstrate how central themes in learners' lives (such as freedom, faith, autonomy, equality, rationality and rights) can be read and interpreted differently. I suggest that policy and pedagogy for citizenship and democratic education informed by research into…