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Penn State scientist fights backMichael Mann says global warming e-mails are being taken out of context By Frank Warner Of The Morning Call November 26, 2009 Penn State scientist Michael E. Mann on Wednesday said his recently disclosed global warming e-mails show only that he's been pursuing the facts and fighting sloppy science. But Mann distanced himself from a 2008 e-mail by British scientist Phil Jones, who asked Mann and others to delete certain e-mails sought under Freedom of Information laws. ''I'm not going to defend that request,'' Mann said. ''I did not approve of what he asked for and...

over the last six years, Buffalo taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to teachers not to teach. Twelve different teachers have collected $2.25 million in salary while under suspension and waiting for disciplinary hearings during that time. And that amount doesn't include the costs for substitutes and the hearings themselves. The average wait for those hearings: three years. The school district doesn't release the names of the teachers, or what they've been charged with, but we've learned that right now there's a Physical Education teacher awaiting a hearing who was suspended four years ago this month and has been paid...

Tenure Deconstructed by: Brittany Fortier, July 10, 2009 A system can truly be considered broken when evaluators of hiring decisions are the ones that need to be evaluated. A panel hosted by the Center for American Progress on June 25, 2009, discussed why the American educational system has struggled in keeping itself accountable to students and parents, while at the same time creating a tenure system that critics claim gives teachers jobs for life. Many critics say that evaluation systems for teachers have been a huge reason for this discrepancy. Morgaen Donaldson, Assistant Professor at the Neag School of Education...

Just when it looked like Columbia University might actually be striking an uncharacteristic blow for academic honesty comes word that the institution has caved in to pressure and awarded tenure to one of its most unsavory faculty members. The reportedly lucky recipient is Joseph Massad, associate professor at Columbia's Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture -- who has long been notorious for his obnoxious pronouncements on Israel (and Jews generally), as well as his bullying of students who dare to disagree with him. Word of Massad's tenure comes from As'ad AbuKhalil, a California professor who blogs under...

VERSAILLES — The Kentucky Community and Technical College System's governing board voted Friday to abolish tenure for all new faculty members. Under the policy, all faculty members hired on or after July 1 will be employed on a contractual basis, without tenure. Tenured teachers already on faculty at the system's 16 schools will not be affected. The move isn't going down well with many of those teachers. Faculty members from several community colleges turned out at KCTCS headquarters to oppose the new policy, some carrying signs saying "Keep Tenure."

I'm a tenured professor. But I'd get rid of tenure. Tenure was created to protect academic freedom after a series of 19th-century cases when university donors or legislators tried to remove professors whose views they disliked. .... The rationale for tenure is still valid. But the system has turned the academy into one of the most conservative and costly institutions in the country. Yes, conservative: Economists joke that their discipline advances one funeral at a time, but many fields must wait for wholesale generational turnover before new approaches take hold. The system also hamstrings younger untenured professors, making them fearful...

The Publishable Perishable Professoriat by: Daniel Allen, March 31, 2009 The University: An institution for research and scholarship, or an academy for advanced teaching and learning? The best represent both worlds, but worrying trends indicate that undergraduate students are suffering because teachers must devote their attention to inconsequential research rather than the learning of students in the developmental phase of their education. A study, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), shows how teachers must focus on research in order to keep their careers, which creates a tradition of neglect toward undergraduates. The study was conducted by Mark Bauerlein of...

Mountain View parents say they are fed up with a fourth grade teacher ... who they claim is not being disciplined by the district despite numerous complaints of abuse and misconduct. ... Numerous parents have filed complaints. Stephanie Totter, the District's director of administrative services, "escorted Polifrone off the Huff campus" earlier this month. She was transferred from after parents tried to take legal action against her. District administrators referred all questions about Polifrone to Totter, who replied by e-mail, saying only: "Tenured teachers have significant due process rights. This covers every tenured teacher in the state. It is inappropriate...

Some years ago I was involved with a radical anti-abortion group that was frustrated with efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade. We targeted two abortion clinics – one in Birmingham and the other in Atlanta - for bombings. We successfully carried out both of those bombings without killing anyone on the premises. We wanted to send our message – at least initially – without any unnecessary bloodshed.After we carried out the bombings in Birmingham and Atlanta we gathered together in Charlotte, North Carolina for the express purpose of making a number of bombs that would be used in additional attacks...

As pointed out in Ben Stein's new documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed": "If professors value their careers, they will keep their mouths shut." This is the perfect example of liberal bias and political correctness ruling the day on college campuses... and why the Collegiate Network established the Campus Outrage Awards. Each year the Collegiate Network highlights the five most egregious examples of political correctness run amok on American college campuses. Earlier this month, the Collegiate Network awarded Iowa State University (ISU) a 2008 Campus Outrage Award for classroom bias. ISU received the fifth place for denying Professor Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant...

Scandalous Decoys by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 22, 2008 When legendary director Alfred Hitchcock wanted to build suspense and throw off moviegoers he would distract them with what he called a MacGuffin, which Webster’s defines as “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.” Arguably, some of the wayward college presidents fired by boards of directors in recent years fit this description. For example, the former president of American University, Benjamin Ladner, racked up about half a million dollars a year in expenses that included...

A study by two conservative researchers attempting to determine why conservatives are underrepresented on college and university faculties. The conclusion is while some portion of this imbalance can be traced to "bias" and "discrimination", a large part results from a decision by students with conservative values not to pursue a career with limited economic potential that also requires sacrifice of family commitments to achieve academic advancement. "Since conservatives place an especially high priority on financial security and raising a family, the academy needs to make efforts to adopt more family-friendly policies... "As graduate school is not financially lucrative and pre-tenure...

Nine District Employees Fired For Watching Porn District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty announced today that nine city government employees have been fired for viewing pornography on government computers while at work. The investigation revealed that the 9 employees had made over 20,000 hits apiece to pornographic web sites in the year 2007, which breaks down to about 100 pages a day each over the course of a average work year. The fired employees worked for the offices of Property Management, Child and Family Services, Contracts and Procurement, and the Office of the Attorney General. Fenty also said that 32...

Chicago, Ill- In arranging a series of panels on academic freedom in the classroom, the Modern Language Assocation (MLA) hosted a panel on French and Francophone studies, Chicano literature, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Queer (LGBTQ) issues to discuss barriers to academic freedom. Largely avoiding discussions of students’ academic freedom, the panel argues that, especially among politicized subjects, professors’ academic freedom is threatened by student evaluations, scarce tenure, and even their own professional code of ethics. Code of Ethics“Professional ethical standards, in other words, can be put into service when an institution deems fit to curtail academic freedom when it...

In the 16th century a large, powerful institution saw itself as threatened by heretics - people who didn’t agree with all its dogmas - so it began to identify and punish those dissidents. Five hundred years later a similar effort is under way. In the 16th century it was the Roman Catholic church; today it is Big Science. The only real difference is that today heretics are simply deprived of their livelihood; burning at the stake is no longer in vogue. Exhibit One in this contention is found on Page A2 of the Dec. 14 Enquirer: “Global-warning skeptic says he’s...

DEARBORN, Mich. — Professors with tenure or who are on a tenure track are now a distinct minority on the country’s campuses, as the ranks of part-time instructors and professors hired on a contract have swelled, according to federal figures analyzed by the American Association of University Professors. The shift from a tenured faculty results from financial pressures, administrators’ desire for more flexibility in hiring, firing and changing course offerings, and the growth of community colleges and regional public universities focused on teaching basics and preparing students for jobs.It has become so extreme, however, that some universities are pulling back,...

(CNSNews.com) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama received about $1.5 million in contributions this year from college professors and others in the education field, outpacing the party's front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who got $940,000 from academics. Still, Clinton's near-$1-million second-place finish was almost as much as academia's total combined donations to leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. (See Complete Candidate Breakdown) That many college professors and academics lean to the political left is no surprise -- 76 percent of their donations went to Democratic candidates in the first two quarters of 2007. But the volume...

Fired Professor Ward Churchill to Sue University Last Edited: Wednesday, 25 Jul 2007, 1:26 PM MDT Created: Wednesday, 25 Jul 2007, 12:50 PM MDT (Credit: MyFox) SideBar Related Items Stories Colorado Prof Fired After 9-11 Remarks LAKE CHARLES -- DENVER -- Ward Churchill will file a lawsuit against the University of Colorado on Wednesday. He is challenging his dismissal as a professor from the institution. University of Colorado regents voted 8-1 Tuesday to accept school president Hank Brown's recommendation to fire him. CU Regent Cindy Carlisle had the lone dissenting vote. Ward Churchill and his attorney, David Lane, plan to...

ACLU urges CU regents not to fire Ward Churchill July 20, 2007 The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the University of Colorado's Board of Regents on Thursday, urging them not to fire professor Ward Churchill. "I think that the protection of the First Amendment rights is vital in the university and in the general public," said Cathy Hazouri, executive director of ACLU of Colorado.

Intelligent Design scientist faults university evolution ideology A scientist who believes the theory of intelligent design helps explain life's origins is appealing to state officials to save his job at Iowa State University, where his tenure was rejected because of his "personal religious and ideological beliefs." snip John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, where Gonzalez is a senior fellow, said the tenure denial is "clearly a result of the vicious attacks he's had to endure from Darwinists and various atheists for presenting a scientific argument for the intelligent design of the universe based...

There is evidence for intelligent design in the universe." This does not seem like an especially radical statement; many people believe that God has revealed himself through creation. Such beliefs, however, do not conform to politically correct notions in academia, as Professor Guillermo Gonzalez is learning the hard way. An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe.& nbsp; Dr. Gonzalez's case has truly...

A Canadian political scientist excoriated for attending what was widely labelled a Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran has retaliated with a blistering published attack on his university president and his colleagues for being illiterate Islamophobes. Writing in the influential Literary Review of Canada, Shiraz Dossa, a tenured professor at Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University, said that his academic integrity and academic freedom were grossly impugned by the university administration, an assault on his reputation that he said has yet to be remedied. He accused the president and chancellor of authorizing a "small Spanish Inquisition" to denounce him - a campaign...

Proponents of intelligent design never know when they might be led away to the ideological chopping block. Take, for example, biologist Carolyn Crocker, who was banned from teaching evolution at George Mason University after mentioning intelligent design. Or evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, who was demoted by the Smithsonian Institute after he approved an article that supported intelligent design. Now add Guillermo Gonzalez to that list. Last month, Gonzalez, assistant professor of astronomy and physics at Iowa State University, was denied tenure. His supposed crime? Believing something other than Darwinism. Why else would he be denied? It certainly can’t be his...

Proponent of intelligent design denied tenure by ISU By: William Dillon 05/12/2007 Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy and physics who argues for the theory of intelligent design, was denied tenure this semester by Iowa State University. "I was surprised to hear that my tenure was denied at any level, but I was disappointed that the president at the end denied me," Gonzalez said during a telephone interview with The Tribune Friday. Gonzalez filed an appeal with ISU President Greg Geoffroy on Tuesday, May 8. Geoffroy has 20 days to respond. While his work is heralded as "path-breaking" by...

Breaking News: Iowa State Department Faculty Acknowledge ID Played Role in Gonzalez's Tenure Denial According to a story to be published in the May 26 edition of World Magazine (already available online here), two faculty members of the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzales at Iowa State University have admitted that his work on ID played a role in the denial. While Prof. Eli Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, insisted to the magazine that intelligent design "was not an overriding factor" (emphasis added), he then conceded according to the magazine that Gonzalez's pro-ID book The...

The timing could not have been better. Just as the Jewish holiday of liberation, Passover, was about to begin, the news was spreading throughout the blogosphere that one of America's most openly anti-Semitic and anti-American pseudo-academics was about to be "passed over" for tenure. That tentative decision is now being attacked by the Left as supposed suppression of academic freedom, although in fact it is merely the introduction at long last of some semblance of academic quality control into a university that has been under attack for lacking such.

WASHINGTON - Large percentages of high school seniors are posting weak scores on national math and reading tests even though more of them are taking challenging courses and getting higher grades in school, say two new government reports released Thursday.

Climate scientists feeling the heat As public debate deals in absolutes, some experts fear predictions 'have created a monster'Scientists long have issued the warnings: The modern world's appetite for cars, air conditioning and cheap, fossil-fuel energy spews billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, unnaturally warming the world. Yet, it took the dramatic images of a hurricane overtaking New Orleans and searing heat last summer to finally trigger widespread public concern on the issue of global warming. Climate scientists might be expected to bask in the spotlight after their decades of toil. The general public now cares about...

BOSTON -- A black professor at MIT has threatened to go on a hunger strike and "die defiantly" outside the provost's office if the university does not grant him tenure, which he said was denied because of racism. For two years, stem cell scientist James L. Sherley has asked senior administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to overturn the decision by his department head not to put him forward for tenure. On Monday, he was told by provost L. Rafael Reif that the decision would stand. "I will either see the provost resign and my hard-earned tenure granted at...

California schoolteachers shouldn't get tenure. If they suck at their job, they need to be fired. Liberal teachers' unions make sure that bad teachers can't get fired. Their insfficiency is dumbing down the students and costing us money. This just in....California sucks. ARTICLE: Teachers Like Tenure But Admit Its Flaws New teachers left with most difficult students Written By: George A. Clowes Published In: School Reform News Publication Date: July 1, 2003 Publisher: The Heartland Institute -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of America's public school teachers (58 percent) believe tenure protects teachers from district politics, favoritism, and the threat of losing their jobs...

It's nothing unusual for a sixth grade class to be assigned a book to read -- usually something like Huck Finn. But a book that a Baker Middle School teacher suggested for her 6th graders is raising eyebrows and tempers. WAFB's Paul Gates investigated, and found a novel filled with sexually explicit scenes -- including men having sex together. Roberta Townsend says her 6th grade, 11-year-old daughter came home from Baker Middle with the name and author of a book her social studies teacher suggested the students should read. She says her daughter related the teacher's instructions: "She told them...

Until just recently, the UNCW administration was trying to deprive me of both a) my right to appeal their decision to deny my promotion to full professor and, b) my right to a written explanation of that decision. Now, the leader of our local communist dictatorship has given me a written explanation although I am told by university officials that I have no right to use it in an appeal. In fact, here at UNC-We Hate Due Process, I can’t appeal the decision with any documents at all. There is no appellate process whatsoever. Given that I have won several...

The University of Colorado student union voted Thursday in support of firing tenured ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill. The union's legislative council voted 9-6 in favor of a resolution supporting former Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano's recommendation to fire Churchill for plagiarism and research misconduct. The resolution will be sent to the student government's tri-executives and will go into effect if two of the three student leaders sign it. "This is not a problem that is attached to the entire ethnic studies department — just a not-so-good professor and he doesn't deserve to be employed here," ... "He takes away from...

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. A pompous radio talk-show host makes what he feels to be a big-time argument slamming the other side and closes out the segment with a flourish: "Don't try this at home, kids!" Really? I beg to differ. Home is the perfect place to try this. Kids need to make comments and arguments with their parents about current events and politics. This is where their education begins. Parents need to listen, offer their own insights and keep the exchanges calm and more discussion-like than argument-like. You know … the opposite...

The University of Colorado has fired two tenured professors in the history of the Boulder campus. And Ward Churchill, if dismissed, would be the first to be fired because of alleged research misconduct. Scholars say it's more common at universities that unpopular professors are squeezed out — or given early-retirement settlements — rather than fired. The protection of tenure can make outright job termination a costly and lengthy battle. Richard Berthold, a former University of New Mexico professor, retired two years after he was censured for telling his class on Sept. 11, 2001: "Anyone who blows up the Pentagon gets...

If you missed John Stossel's special last month about how public schools are shortchanging our children, you missed this sadly quite believable story about how hard it is for schools to fire tenured teachers. The union contracts are so strong that a teacher can do practically anything, even write emails soliciting sex from students and not get fired. Joel Klein now presides over a calcified monopoly where it's hard to fire anyone for anything. One New York teacher decided that one of his 16-year-old students was hot. So he sat down at a computer and sent a sexual e-mail...

"When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course." — Peter Drucker For-profit educational services. Capitalizing off of instructional training. Bankrolling tutelage on a gravy train. Go ahead and sneer; cringe and shudder — get it out of your system. Oh the horror, running a profitable business that includes many of the facets of a traditional higher education.[1] Perhaps this is one of the reasons that a disproportionate amount of the Ivory Tower is socialistically inclined; subconsciously they may fear that the market value of their research, teaching and professional existence subsists among relatively strange bedfellows, those...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A professor and outspoken anarchist has agreed to leave Yale University this spring, ending an appeal over whether his termination was politically motivated. David Graeber, one of the world's leading social anthropologists, said he will teach two classes next semester, then take a yearlong paid sabbatical after which he will not return. "Normally, you get a sabbatical on the condition that you come back and teach the following year," Graeber said. "I'm getting the sabbatical on the condition that I don't come back and teach." Yale spokesman Tom Conroy would not discuss the matter Wednesday but...

Colorado 9/11 Slur Prof to Be Investigated Friday, September 09, 2005 DENVER — A University of Colorado (search) panel recommended a full investigation Friday of research misconduct allegations against a professor who triggered a national outcry for likening some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi. The faculty committee called for investigating Ward Churchill (search) on seven allegations involving plagiarism, misuse of others' work and falsification and fabrication, interim provost Susan Avery said. The committee recommended dropping two other allegations, that Churchill falsely claimed to be an American Indian and that he infringed on a copyright. Churchill and his attorney did...

The summer of 2005 has been an embarrassing one at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. First, the university came under fire when it was revealed that Paul W. Barrows, the vice chancellor for student affairs who quit last year, did so because he had had an affair with a graduate student. That Barrows stayed on the university’s payroll infuriated legislators, and focused attention on how the university treats employees who get into trouble. Now some lawmakers have shifted their attention to professors — three of whom remain employees even though they are either in jail or headed there. On...

Reading his majority opinion in the last case on the last day of the U.S. Supreme Court's term, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was in a joking mood. He was reviewing those who'd voted with him and against him in the Texas Ten Commandments case, and by the time he'd finished with the concurrences and dissents, he'd rattled off 12 names. This was the moment the 80-year-old chief justice – hobbled since October by thyroid cancer – was supposed to resign. But he didn't. And he hasn't. And now it appears that he won't. One theory is as good as another,...

UNIQUE AMONG education reformers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has zeroed in on underperforming teachers as a principal reason why millions of California students are doing so poorly in our schools. The initiative he is pushing to make it more difficult for teachers to get "tenure" is a classic case of a solution in search of problem. Let's put aside for the moment the fact that teachers don't actually get tenure. They get "permanent status," which still means under state law they can be fired for all kinds of reasons, including inadequate performance. But they are entitled to a hearing and other...

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was awarded a 2.28 percent merit pay increase this week for work performed in 2004, a little less than his department's average recommended salary increase for professors. A statement released by CU said pay increases for Boulder campus faculty are approved by interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano and based on reviews and recommendations by committees at the department, school or college, and administrative levels. Churchill's increase was finalized Thursday. The average recommended increase for ethnic studies department faculty was 3.21 percent, according to the CU statement. "In 2004, Professor Churchill taught a higher number of...

University presidents often blame rising tuition costs on stagnant state funding or lagging private support following the 2000-01 recession and stock market decline. But actually, tuition increases have exceeded inflation for at least four decades, including in periods when state funding and private support were rapidly growing. The real reasons tuition has risen sharply are two-fold: a steady increase in demand for higher education and a lack of market discipline by colleges and universities, most of which are non-profits. Demand for higher education has grown because of rising incomes and population as well as the higher salaries college graduates earn....

(snip) Schwarzenegger has said he remains open to negotiating a compromise on all of his proposed initiatives, even though they're heading for the ballot. If so, he should start with the tenure proposal. It's an odd issue to go to war over anyway, considering the multitude of education initiatives he could be staking his political career on. Written by Bonnie Garcia, a Republican assemblywoman from El Centro, it was plucked from obscurity without much analysis. After a merit pay proposal for teachers fell by the wayside, tenure became the No. 1 issue by default. The initiative would make two changes...

The sea is far from full, but the current still can serve. The tide, ebbing for decades, has begun to flow. It is time to seize the initiative lest we miss the moment and lose our ventures.   "After the Vietnam War, a lot of us didn't just crawl back into our literary cubicles; we stepped into academic positions. With the war over, our visibility was lost, and it seemed for a while — to the unobservant — that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure, and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest."  — Jay...

Teachers would need five years in the classroom instead of two to get tenure-like job protection under a contentious measure appearing on the next statewide ballot. The initiative — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Put the Kids First Act" — qualified for the ballot late Monday. If the governor calls a special election as expected next week, the measure likely will go to voters in November. Otherwise, the next statewide election is scheduled for June. The initiative would require teachers to work five years with satisfactory performance before receiving permanent status. The process for firing a permanent teacher requires mediation and due...

While American universities may proclaim diversity as an exalted value, a recent study shows that the only freedom of thought that really exists on campus is "to believe the dominant political ideology. Other ideologies are marginalized." (Klien and Western. For full text of study, follow links below.) But Phil Mitchell doesn’t need a study to validate what he has experienced for over 20 years. "The truth is, universities are the most hostile, narrow-minded and intolerant environment in society," Mitchell said. Mitchell, 57, is a former history professor at the University of Colorado (CU) and a deeply committed Christian. He was...

Prof defends academic work with 50 pages in response to criticism By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News May 17, 2005 University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill on Monday submitted his response to the faculty committee that is investigating whether he committed research misconduct and should lose his tenured teaching position. His attorney, David Lane, said a response of more than 50 pages, single-spaced, was delivered to a committee representative Monday afternoon. Lane said that Churchill answered each and every point on which his past scholarship and academic credentials have been challenged. "He responded to everything, including the absolutely unconstitutional inquiry...

The victory of two dark-horse candidates for Dartmouth College's board of trustees this week has revived a struggle over competing visions for the future of the small Ivy League campus. Peter Robinson, who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan and is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Todd J. Zywicki, a George Mason University law professor who contributes to a libertarian-leaning web log, ran on platforms that were scathingly critical of the administration, saying it has become too politically correct and has stifled fraternities, de-emphasized athletics, and shortchanged teaching in favor of research.