Norman Markowitz: Of course, intellectual freedom is not only the basis of all serious learning and teaching; it is the foundation of citizens’ democratic rights. In the attack on William Cronon, we see exactly the kind of bullying and intimidation that employers in non-union situations have always used against workers when it suited their interests. It is evidence that labor’s struggle and Wisconsin’s struggle are everyone’s struggle. But what can and should be done? First, University of Wisconsin officials, whose own prestige and high salaries are based largely on the achievement of Cronon and other working faculty at the university,…
Leave a CommentTag: unions
Salon.com: We need our universities, public and private, to be places where academics feel free to pursue whatever line of thought they want. If that pursuit spills over to action, we should be careful about what restrictions we try to enforce. Better, by far, to err on the side of freedom, because that, theoretically, is what this country is all about.
Leave a CommentLast week’s guest post on the digital humanities and the classics really got me thinking about academic outreach (both from inside academia to those outside and spreading information about digital tools and projects within academia). Dan Cohen furthered my thinking with a good post about blogging as a medium and the resistance of blogging academics to take on the blogger moniker. While these posts encourage academics to venture into the “public sphere,” one recent news item (William Cronon and the Wisconsin GOP’s inquiry into his emails) highlights the dangers of academics moving outside the ivory tower and the importance of…
Leave a CommentThough sustainability may seem like a problem unique to digital projects, print materials have had issues (acidity, humidity, fire, etc.) of sustainability throughout their existence. Over time archivists, publishers, scholars, and others have developed ways to prolong the lives of print materials (acid-free paper, climate control, fire departments, etc.). As more and more “stuff” is produced and stored digitally, the sustainability of digital materials is becoming a pressing issue that needs someone (archivists, publishers, scholars, others?) to develop solutions. I use two digital history projects to raise some issues of sustainability, though I omit many other important aspects (version control…
Leave a CommentThrough a friend from undergrad I learned people at Yale are working on organizing and getting recognized a graduate student union. First, I think this is great and wish them luck. Second, on a more broad point, I do not think the corporatization of the university is a good trend. Even though there is a dearth of literature about the crisis in humanities (and the increasing amount of unstable adjunct positions, the disappearance of tenure track positions, the death of the scholarly press, etc.), which can wear down even the most enthusiastic optimist among us, I may need to organize…
Leave a Comment