The Good, The Bad, The Spin

Michael Chertoff did an outstanding job communicating during his visit to Southern California to assess the fire situation. His comments on NPR were particularly sensible, in which he expressed passion and conveyed calmness in responding to the situation. Here is a Q&A conducted with him. Although his performance could be nitpicked in detail, Chertoff nevertheless accomplished something that, at the end of the day, takes remarkable skill.

Hurricane Katrina fucked up a lot of things for a lot of people. Its resonance is still being felt and today it was reported that a slew of universities were hit with censure by the American Association of University Professors, the organization that protects the rights of faculty in higher education. (Disclosure: I was a member of the AAUP when I was an administrative faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno.)

Censure is significant. Today’s news is fallout from Katrina, which essentially forced Louisiana universities to make tough decisions about keeping on faculty in light of dire financial situations. The positions of tenured faculty were preciously watched over by the AAUP, especially as firings had to occur, and today’s decision to place six colleges and universities on the organization’s censure list for “a pervasive disregard for faculty governance,” as reported by Inside Higher Ed, is, like Katrina, unprecedented. (more…)