What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education

What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393254933
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
"A sensitive, sensible, and compelling account of American education at its best."—Philadelphia Inquirer Described as one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by right-wing critic David Horowitz, Michael Bérubé has become a leading liberal voice in the ongoing culture wars. This "smooth and swift read" (New Criterion) offers a definitive rebuttal of conservative activists' most incendiary claims about American universities, and in the process makes a supple case for liberalism itself. An important polemic as well as "a clear-eyed, occasionally quite humorous account of the joys and frustrations of running a college classroom" (New York Observer), this book is required reading for anyone concerned about the political climate on and off campus.

What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and "Bias" in Higher Education

What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393254933
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A sensitive, sensible, and compelling account of American education at its best."—Philadelphia Inquirer Described as one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by right-wing critic David Horowitz, Michael Bérubé has become a leading liberal voice in the ongoing culture wars. This "smooth and swift read" (New Criterion) offers a definitive rebuttal of conservative activists' most incendiary claims about American universities, and in the process makes a supple case for liberalism itself. An important polemic as well as "a clear-eyed, occasionally quite humorous account of the joys and frustrations of running a college classroom" (New York Observer), this book is required reading for anyone concerned about the political climate on and off campus.

What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?

What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts? PDF Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393060379
Category : Education, Higher
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Described as one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by right-wing critic David Horowitz, Michael Bérubé has become a leading liberal voice in the ongoing culture wars. This "smooth and swift read" (New Criterion) offers a definitive rebuttal of conservative activists' most incendiary claims about American universities, and in the process makes a supple case for liberalism itself. An important polemic as well as "a clear-eyed, occasionally quite humorous account of the joys and frustrations of running a college classroom" (New York Observer), this book is required reading for anyone concerned about the political climate on and off campus.

Higher Education in America

Higher Education in America PDF Author: Derek Bok
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165580
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek Bok Higher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as the weaknesses of American higher education today. At a time when colleges and universities have never been more important to the lives and opportunities of students or to the progress and prosperity of the nation, Bok provides a thorough examination of the entire system, public and private, from community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to great universities with their research programs and their medical, law, and business schools. Drawing on the most reliable studies and data, he determines which criticisms of higher education are unfounded or exaggerated, which are issues of genuine concern, and what can be done to improve matters. Some of the subjects considered are long-standing, such as debates over the undergraduate curriculum and concerns over rising college costs. Others are more recent, such as the rise of for-profit institutions and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additional topics include the quality of undergraduate education, the stagnating levels of college graduation, the problems of university governance, the strengths and weaknesses of graduate and professional education, the environment for research, and the benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive competition among American colleges and universities. Offering a rare survey and evaluation of American higher education as a whole, this book provides a solid basis for a fresh public discussion about what the system is doing right, what it needs to do better, and how the next quarter century could be made a period of progress rather than decline.

Let's Be Reasonable

Let's Be Reasonable PDF Author: Jonathan Marks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207720
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A conservative college professor's compelling defense of liberal education Not so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks finds in liberal education an antidote to this despair, arguing that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable—and revealing why the health of our democracy is at stake. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and other thinkers, Marks presents the case for why, now more than ever, conservatives must not give up on higher education. He recognizes that professors and administrators frequently adopt the language and priorities of the left, but he explains why conservative nightmare visions of liberal persecution and indoctrination bear little resemblance to what actually goes on in college classrooms. Marks examines why advocates for liberal education struggle to offer a coherent defense of themselves against their conservative critics, and demonstrates why such a defense must rest on the cultivation of reason and of pride in being reasonable. More than just a campus battlefield guide, Let's Be Reasonable recovers what is truly liberal about liberal education—the ability to reason for oneself and with others—and shows why the liberally educated person considers reason to be more than just a tool for scoring political points.

The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom

The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom PDF Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137506121
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
This book is a lively, passionate defence of contemporary work in the humanities, and, beyond that, of the university system that makes such work possible. The book's stark accounts of academic labour, and its proposals for reform of the tenure system, are novel, controversial, timely, and very necessary.

The Future of American Higher Education

The Future of American Higher Education PDF Author: Joseph L. DeVitis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000971260
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
"This impressive anthology presents the reader with an introduction to a gallery of public intellectuals through the critical eyes of a wide array of contributing writers from various academic fields. Both the latter and the public intellectuals themselves are responding to the state of American higher education. Importantly, most of them (there are a few public intellectuals in the book who cling closer to the status quo) do not separate colleges and universities from the political, economic, and social currents of American society. They attack the realities of growing social inequality, the intractable presence of institutional racism, and the recurrent reliance on the free market as the arbiter of value. Public intellectuals assess the impact of these social factors on the organization and practices of contemporary American higher education. They force the reader to consider serious challenges to the current arrangement of higher learning and, as such, they ask us to assess the efficacy of their respective perspectives. Do they present the reader with insight or idealism, pathways or dead ends? This compendium provides an abundance of ideas for higher education leaders, policy makers, faculty members, trustees and governmental officials as well as social theorists and graduate students interested in higher education careers."—Richard Guarasci, President Emeritus of Wagner CollegeJust as our society is polarized, higher education is no less divided as to its mission and purpose, whether it should be preparing students for employment or for engagement as citizens, whether it should be corporatist and profit-driven or promote intellectual curiosity and independent thinking, and whether it should pursue a neoliberal agenda or promote a liberal education. Whose scholarship, culture and epistemologies should be validated? Should it be a private or a public good? Preserve tenure or erode it? What role should colleges and universities play in addressing economic inequality and systemic racism? The answers to these questions are critical for the future of our society as our universities and colleges are the nurseries of the values and philosophies that shape it.The chapters in this book review the contributions of seventeen public intellectuals who have been at the forefront of these issues and significantly contributed to these debates. Each describes the genesis of each scholar’s ideas and presents and critiques his or her core insights and arguments. The seventeen public intellectuals represent a spectrum of opinion, from the conservative to the progressive.At this pivotal moment when much of higher education is in economic crisis, and public trust in it has been eroded, this book offers a robust entry point for considering the options and directions ahead for anyone in a leadership position. The book will also be valuable for higher education courses to stimulate debate about these critical issues and introduce readers to the seminal thinkers in the field.Public Intellectuals PresentedStanley AronowitzMichael BérubéMarc BousquetPatricia Hill CollinsLori Patton DavisWilliam DeresiewiczStanley Fish Marybeth GasmanHenry GirouxSara Goldrick-RabbAmy GutmannRussell JacobyRandall KennedyDavid KirpDavid F. LabareeChristopher NewfieldMichael Roth

The Left at War

The Left at War PDF Author: Michael Bérubé
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081479985X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and Bush’s belligerent response fractured the American left—partly by putting pressure on little-noticed fissures that had appeared a decade earlier. In a masterful survey of the post-9/11 landscape, renowned scholar Michael Bérubé revisits and reinterprets the major intellectual debates and key players of the last two decades, covering the terrain of left debates in the United States over foreign policy from the Balkans to 9/11 to Iraq, and over domestic policy from the culture wars of the 1990s to the question of what (if anything) is the matter with Kansas. The Left at War brings the history of cultural studies to bear on the present crisis—a history now trivialized to the point at which few left intellectuals have any sense that merely "cultural" studies could have something substantial to offer to the world of international relations, debates over sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, matters of war and peace. The surprising results of Bérubé’s arguments reveal an American left that is overly fond of a form of "countercultural" politics in which popular success is understood as a sign of political failure and political marginality is understood as a sign of moral virtue. The Left at War insists that, in contrast to American countercultural traditions, the geopolitical history of cultural studies has much to teach us about internationalism—for "in order to think globally, we need to think culturally, and in order to understand cultural conflict, we need to think globally." At a time when America finds itself at a critical crossroads, The Left at War is an indispensable guide to the divisions that have created a left at war with itself.

Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Macro Level

Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Macro Level PDF Author: Katherine Van Wormer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190211083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A timely revision in this global age, Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Macro Level develops a sophisticated and original view of the cultural, global, spiritual, and natural worlds that people inhabit, and explores the impact of these worlds on human behavior. An ecosystems/sustainability framework emerges as a key characteristic of contemporary practice. What is sustainable social work? What are the characteristics of a sustainable community? How is the present exploitation of environmental resources unsustainable for future generations? In accordance with the 2015 Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) standards, attention is paid to environmental justice as well as diversity and difference.

Academic Lives

Academic Lives PDF Author: Cynthia G. Franklin
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820335878
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, there has been a proliferation of memoirs by tenured humanities professors. Although the memoir form has been discussed within the flourishing field of life writing, academic memoirs have received little critical scrutiny. Based on close readings of memoirs by such academics as Michael Bérubé, Cathy N. Davidson, Jane Gallop, bell hooks, Edward Said, Eve Sedgwick, Jane Tompkins, and Marianna Torgovnick, Academic Lives considers why so many professors write memoirs and what cultural capital they carry. Cynthia G. Franklin finds that academic memoirs provide unparalleled ways to unmask the workings of the academy at a time when it is dealing with a range of crises, including attacks on intellectual freedom, discontentment with the academic star system, and budget cuts. Franklin considers how academic memoirs have engaged with a core of defining concerns in the humanities: identity politics and the development of whiteness studies in the 1990s; the impact of postcolonial studies; feminism and concurrent anxieties about pedagogy; and disability studies and the struggle to bring together discourses on the humanities and human rights. The turn back toward humanism that Franklin finds in some academic memoirs is surreptitious or frankly nostalgic; others, however, posit a wide-ranging humanism that seeks to create space for advocacy in the academic and other institutions in which we are all unequally located. These memoirs are harbingers for the critical turn to explore interrelations among humanism, the humanities, and human rights struggles.

Out of Bounds

Out of Bounds PDF Author: Matthew Abraham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441198024
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Academic freedom is a key element of the academic enterprise in the U.S. However, it does not seem to exist when scholars seek to advocate on behalf of Palestinian self-determination. This unique work examines how the knowledge-power nexus is shaping the discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict and restricting academic freedom. Beginning with a discussion of American Zionism, the work proceeds to explain why scholars working on the question of Palestine are often denied standard academic freedom. This is supported by prominent cases, such as Norman G. Finkelstein's denial of tenure, the Middle East Studies Department at Columbia University, and Mearsheimer and Walt's book, The Israel Lobby. The work of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky are also discussed and the book concludes with recommendations for protecting intellectual freedom to those seeking to critically pursue the question of Palestine. This scholarly study will appeal to a broad audience of faculty, students, and readers who seek to understand the importance of academic freedom and the thorny debates surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.