Do donors have too much influence over universities?
“I scarcely know anybody who works in the academy these days who isn’t concerned about donors’ influence,” Professor Denise Réaume told me resignedly. “It’s almost unheard of for someone to make a big money gift that is not targeted in some way. Nobody calls up a university and says, “Here’s $20 million, now go do good stuff with it”.
For this University of Toronto (UT) law professor as well as for Vincent Wong, a Toronto lawyer and former lecturer at the university’s law school, Exhibit A for undue donor influence is not the expected perk of naming of a building – as it is in so many American colleges and universities which have accepted gifts with strings attached from foundations such as Charles Koch Foundation.
As strike deadline approaches, Oregon Tech officials seek state injunction to prevent walkout
Approximately 200 full-time faculty at the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) in Klamath Falls in southern Oregon may strike on April 26 if an agreement is not reached between the university and Oregon Tech-American Association of University Professors (OT-AAUP). The union said 92 percent of members voted in favor of the strike authorization on April 2, with nearly the entire membership taking part in the vote.
In a last minute effort to block a strike, management has sought an injunction with the Oregon Employment Relations Board. OIT has also filed an unfair labor relations complaint against the OIT-AAUP, claiming failure to bargain in good faith. The union said its lawyer was reviewing the OIT filing, calling it a “delay tactic.”
by Shawgi Tell / April 23rd, 2021
To conceal the economic and social decline that continues to unfold at home and abroad, major newspapers are working overtime to promote happy economic news. Many headlines are irrational and out of touch. They make no sense. Desperation to convince everyone that all is well or all will soon be great is very high. The assault on economic science and coherence is intense. Working in concert, and contrary to the lived experience of millions of people, many newspapers are declaring miraculous “economic growth rates” for country after country. According to the rich and their media, numerous countries are experiencing or are on the cusp of experiencing very strong “come-backs” or “complete recoveries.” Very high rates of annual economic growth, generally not found in any prior period, are being floated regularly. The numbers defy common sense.
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OIT’s faculty union has declared its intent to strike. The university says the union has not acted in good faith.
The Oregon Institute of Technology filed
a petition Wednesday with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, asking the agency to declare a tentative faculty strike unlawful.
Earlier this month OIT’s faculty union, a chapter of the American Association of University Professors,
declared its intention to strike. That declaration came as the union and university had been bargaining for 16 months.
If the union strikes it said it will if an agreement is not reached by this coming Monday it would be the first public university faculty union in Oregon ever to do so.
Student campaigns to censure and punish professors. Fri Apr 23, 2021
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews. Seeming to give credence to Bertrand Russell’s observation that “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts,” Michael Saunders, a member of the University of Washington Student Senate, introduced a resolution to create a system for students and staff to serve on an academic jury. The purpose of this jury, according to the resolution filed by Sanders, is to resolve “all discrimination accusations and charges that violate the University of Washington’s mission statement” so that the university is able to “think outside the lens of an oppressive system and think in a mindset of