Articles by Bethany Stotts

At a recent MLA panel, one academic criticized how, he argues, poets have abandoned their usual “skepticism” about political speech when it comes to President Barack Obama’s “eloquence.”

Those unfamiliar with the happenings at Modern Language Association (MLA) annual conventions might wonder why it is that Sarah Palin’s stance on sex education received mention during a panel on “Major Romantic Writers.”

UC Berkeley Professor John Yoo recently appeared on the Jon Stewart Daily Show to discuss his new book Crisis in Command.

With a full year under his belt and approval ratings below 50%, many Americans seem disenchanted with President Obama’s leadership. Even former ivory tower advocates for the President, it seems, are criticizing hope and change in action.

Another installment in the MLA quotations collection.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist is being roundly criticized for promoting the Obama Administration’s health care reform efforts while receiving extensive government funding as a consultant—and not telling journalists about the connection.

Since its inception Accuracy in Academia has catalogued the inner politics of a series of Humanities disciplines, including women’s studies, queer studies, fat studies, labor studies, and others.  This article will introduce a lesser-known Humanities field: age studies.

Three MLA speakers draw a parallel between ageism and “neoliberal” economic policies.

As one blogger notes, it is an academic tradition for professors to “try to one-up their colleagues by exchanging unintentionally hilarious sentences from students’ exams and final papers.” In a similar spirit, I will be providing some of the more striking statements made by professors discussing at the 2009 MLA Convention.

For supporters of David Horowitz’s student Academic Bill of Rights, academic freedom is about protecting vulnerable students from indoctrination at the hands of radical professors. However, one DePaul University professor recently argued that Horowitz’s conception of academic freedom promotes a “distinctly right-wing agenda” and “contains within it a backhanded insult to the intelligence of the students he is purporting to protect.”

At a recent CATO book discussion, one of the think-tank’s scholars condemned Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “regulatory czar,” for coauthoring what he calls an argument against individual rights.

“Santa is clearly a mutant.”

Yes, that’s what a UNC-Chapel Hill employee actually says in a Christmas video produced by the school.