Faculty Lounge

Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, is number 4 on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s What They’re Reading on College Campuses bestseller list. This could produce the biggest shock wave to hit faculty lounges since Reagan captured the youth vote, you betcha’.

MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber was contacted last week by two Republican Senators who took exception to his role in the Administration’s health care reform efforts.

The budget cuts—and tuition hikes—in University of California system have been hard on students there, prompting student protests and the mantra, “get less, pay more.”

The writer who created the angst-ridden teenage hero of Catcher in the Rye has passed away at the age of 91. Teenagers in the six decades the novel has been in publication devoured the story, first as contraband, later as required reading.

Quiz question. Who said this? “I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president…

As reported earlier by Accuracy in Academia, Ohio State University Professor Rebecca Wanzo argued at last year’s Modern Language Association (MLA) convention that the practice of female genital circumcision [FGC] abroad was equivalent to the U.S. restricting funding to abortions in foreign countries.

Although at first blush, polls seem to show that the youth vote mirrors that of society in general, a closer look at changing attitudes among college freshmen shows that they may be, as the liberals used to say, “a product of their environment.”

Academics conclude that China is not quite the threat it has been presumed to be, though hardly benign. Boston College political scientist Robert Ross reminded a Capitol Hill audience recently that China surpassed the United States as the number one trading partner of both Taiwan and South Korea in 2001.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported yesterday that the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has decided to cancel an online Ph.D. program for community college administrators because it competes with Morgan State University, a historically black institution which offers a similar Ph.D. program.

Meghan McCain, that is. She’s scheduled to speak at George Washington University (GWU) on February 9 on the topic of “Redefining Republican: No Labels, No Boxes, No Stereotypes.”

The roster of lectures at George Washington University is about as balanced as an MSNBC broadcast.

The UN warns that illiteracy is a global problem but Americans may not have to look that far to find it.