Tag: Joe Lowndes

In Response to Pending Grad Strike at U. Oregon, Administration Urges Faculty to Make Exams Multiple Choice or Allow Students Not to Take Them

Graduate students at the University of Oregon are about to go on strike. A year ago, I talked on this blog about the faculty union’s effort to negotiate a fair contract. Because so many folks here and elsewhere put pressure on the administration, we helped get the faculty a good contract. Now we need to do stand in solidarity with the grad students. Joe Lowndes, who’s an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon, wrote this guest post on the negotiations and impending strike. Read what he’s got to say—the administration really is urging full-time faculty to turn essay-based, lengthy final exams into multiple choice Scantron tests or simply to allow undergrads to forgo taking the exam […]

Calling all English Professors

Elaine Freedgood, a professor of English at NYU, is organizing a statement of English professors on the Steven Salaita affair. The statement reads as follows: Dear Chancellor Wise: We are members of English Departments from around the world who write, regretfully, to inform you that we will not engage with the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as speakers, as participants in conferences or other events, or as reviewers for the tenure and promotion of your faculty until you rescind the decision to block Professor Steven Salaita’s appointment to the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Many prominent academics have written eloquently about the chilling effect your decision will have on the free […]

Calling All Political Scientists (and Philosophers)

Joe Lowndes, who’s an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon, is organizing a statement on the Steven Salaita affair. The statement reads as follows: Dear Chancellor Wise: we the undersigned will not visit the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus until Professor Salaita is reinstated to the position offered him by the faculty and which he had accepted in good faith. If you are a political scientist, and you wish to sign the statement, please email Joe at jelowndes@gmail.com. John Protevi, a professor of philosophy at Louisiana State University, is organizing an identical statement for philosophers. If you are a philosopher and you wish to sign the statement, email John at protevi@lsu.edu.

Obama: WTF? A Facebook Roundtable of the Left

This morning, my Facebook page exploded. It all started when I posted this excellent piece by Glenn Greenwald about Obama and the debt-ceiling deal. Greenwald says that those who think Obama is weak and lacks backbone, or that he got suckered by the Republicans or is somehow being held hostage, are full of shit.  With a few exceptions, Obama got what he wanted. Greenwald has a lot of evidence to back up his claims, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. So I put the question to my FB friends.  Is Obama politically inept or does he want these massive cuts? And if he wants them, is it because of political calculation? Is he a true believer in neoliberal economics? A hostage […]