Jan

28

Vindication for Grad Employees at the NLRB

Category: Precarity, academic labor system, graduate education, intellectuals are workers, nlrb, political hijinx 2008, solidarity and a tiered workforce, the videos, youth is a category through which class is lived | Leave a Comment

“Democracy in the workplace is still basic to a democratic society, and collective bargaining is still basic to a fair economy,” says Wilma Liebman.
Last week’s appointment of Wilma Liebman to chair the NLRB is extremely welcome news to graduate employees and other academic workers.
The author of a scathing dissent to the Bush mob’s truculent […]

Jan

27

America’s Least Dangerous Professors

Category: MLA, Precarity, academic freedom, academic labor system, david horowitz and ABOR legislation, faculty couples, the videos | 1 Comment

At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association last month, David Horowitz once more shared a panel with AAUP President Cary Nelson, who has previously replied to Horowitz’s exaggerated claims of bias in the classroom. As Chronicle Review editor Liz McMillen’s coverage pointed out, there wasn’t much actual debate in this over-hyped […]

Jan

19

Hello To All That

Category: "quality" and other fighting words, academic labor system, administrators, corporate university, decline of the west (hurray!), faculty on food stamps, feminization of the humanities, graduate education, higher ed in the news, intellectuals are workers, nlrb, political hijinx 2008, proletarian thought, solidarity and a tiered workforce | 3 Comments

“We’re in the business of education,” Arne Duncan says.
The market worshipers have marched out of the building; hurray! Wait–who’s that tall basketball-playing fellow getting ready to sit in the Education seat?
As superintendent of the Chicago public schools, Arne Duncan has given us a fair preview of his vision. It’s “a business-minded, market-driven model […]

Jan

15

Diablo Cody Meets Steven Spielberg

Category: current events, this blogging life, youth is a category through which class is lived | 1 Comment

Seems I attract the Czars of Obsession, even when I’m not pasting Che posters to the Temple of the Free Market (People, However, Chained to Their Desks).
My fairly light-hearted post on early learning, for instance, sparked a little rage: “It’s All Fun and Games, Pal, until Someone’s Child Injects Themselves with Autism!” […]

Jan

13

Early Learning

Category: Emile, MLA, this blogging life, what i'm reading | 2 Comments

One of the things that child-rearing has taught H. and myself is that parenting is the new mystical Belief System in Many Flavors. Like the old belief systems still causing wars around the planet, Parenting Choices (PC) are not really suitable dinner conversation.
Those whose children are older don’t fight with each other about these […]

Jan

8

Excellence in America: The Epidemiology of Wal-mart

Category: "quality" and other fighting words | Leave a Comment

Unless you’re currently afflicted by the GI bug that my family just survived, you’ll want to play this shockwave data visualization of, as LumpenProf puts it, “how quickly the Wal-Mart pandemic has spread from a single outbreak in Arkansas in 1962.”
I think it captures more than one “side” of the Wal-mart debate: on […]