A good deal of outraged reaction greeted “Fat City: Thank You, Illinois Taxpayers, for My Cushy Life,” an article posted on the Weekly Standard’s website on Friday by David Rubinstein, a recently retired (after 34 years) sociology professor at the publicly funded University of Illinois-Chicago. The article was a hoot and a half. Rubinstein chronicled in detail the […]
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William Ayers is back in the news—after the University of Illinois-Chicago Board of Trustees denied his designation as professor emeritus. The issue arose after Christopher Kennedy—the late senator’s son and the chairman of the UIC trustees—noted that Ayers had dedicated a 1974 to (among others) the assassin Sirhan Sirhan, who Ayers also described as a […]
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Professor Sandra K. Soto’s commencement speech at the University of Arizona caused national commotion—she bitterly attacked the new Arizona immigration law—but not much discussion about whether controversial issues are appropriate in such talks. One common opinion, raised repeatedly in Professor Soto’s case, is that invited speakers should not impose their politics on a captive audience. […]
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In May the Illinois State’s Attorney’s office issued a stunningly unusual subpoena. It asked for the student grades, grading criteria, class syllabi, expense reports, and even e-mail messages of undergraduates taking an investigative reporting class at Northwestern University. The class tied into the Medill Innocence Project, a program administered by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism […]
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ACTA’s latest publication, “For the People: A Report Card on Public Higher Education in Illinois” has unearthed more of the usual disappointments. In a series of rankings, General Education requirements earned an F, with only three public universities (out of eight) indicating a foreign language requirement “and not a single institution received credit for Literature […]
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Illinois, the state where Senate seats are sometimes sold, has now scandalized higher education with the revelation that hundreds of applicants to the University of Illinois were placed on a special “clout” list, many receiving favorable treatment. According to a series of investigative reports by The Chicago Tribune, state legislators, university trustees, and former Gov. […]
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On the day in 1858 that Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen A. Douglas in the fifth of their great series of debates across Illinois, both candidates mounted a platform which had been hastily cobbled together and moved to the east side of Knox College’s ‘Old Main,’ in Galesburg, Illinois. Because of a quirk in the height […]
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