New survey finds 24 percent of faculty senate chairs say faculty influence declined during COVID-19. Fifteen percent of chairs say it increased. Survey also delves into faculty say in budget decisions, voided handbooks, contracts and more.
Universities face pressure to vet ex-Trump officials before hiring them Marisa Iati, Lauren Lumpkin Richard Grenell, a former Trump administration official, speaks to reporters at the White House in September. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) There is a long tradition of political appointees moving into academia former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford University as a professor, ex-CIA director Robert Gates was a dean and then president at Texas A&M University, and former secretary of health and human services Sylvia Mathews Burwell is president of American University. But in recent months, some students and faculty have argued colleges should apply more scrutiny to former Trump officials looking to make similar transitions.
Joseph Epstein
Hearing politicians mischaracterize and discredit faculty work is par for the course in academe. It’s much more surprising to hear someone with actual teaching experience do it. So professors shared a collective WTF? moment last week when Joseph Epstein, writer and emeritus lecturer of English at Northwestern University, published an op-ed in
The Wall Street Journal stating that it’s not uncommon to make $200,000 per year for “essentially a six-month job, and without ever having to put in an eight-hour day.”
The premise of Epstein’s piece is that “if government is going to pay for college, at least it ought to try to bring down the cost,” and that he knows where to start cutting because he taught for 30 years. He doesn’t just attack faculty work Epstein also suggests reducing the salaries of university presidents by 90 percent, curing administrative bloat and slashing athletic coaches’ pay. But “at the tonier universities,” he says, “p