Climate scientists have received threatening letters and e-mails for years. Their names have been dragged through the mud in congressional hearings, on newspaper editorial pages, on talk-radio shows, and in their home communities by those seeking to distract and mislead the public. Despite the continued harassment, however, scientists were still…

This January, the Inter Faculty Organization, the union representing nearly 3,300 faculty members at the seven Minnesota state universities, took the unusual step of making an offer that broke dramatically with past practice and with typical union negotiating. The Minnesota faculty offered to accept a pay freeze while holding current contract…

The author's experience as the faculty senate chair at the University of Mississippi (UM) during a year of budget crises is likely typical of many other university senate leaders. He found that major challenges face senates trying to play a role in developing budget reduction recommendations. These include: (1) an absence of understanding on the…

Florida has been one of the states hit hardest by the recent financial crisis. Since 2007, Florida State University (FSU) administration says, the university's budget has been cut by over $38 million. The state budget approved by the legislature on May 8, 2009, requires FSU to make another cut of more than $43 million from the institution's…

This September, public universities in Texas will be required to post on their Web sites detailed syllabi for all undergraduate courses, a curriculum vitae for each regular instructor, a departmental budget report for each course offered, and reports of student course evaluations. According to a new state law, all of this must be "accessible…

In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

Faculty sometimes use votes of no confidence as a tool of last resort to express opposition to a college administration. Unfortunately, however, such votes often have limited effect aside from further damaging relations between administrators and faculty. This article describes how a no-confidence vote was averted at Alfred State College (formally…

This article talks about the retired faculty members from different types of institutions around the country that were interviewed to find out how well their preparations for retirement are serving them now. Like other state employees in California, faculty members at public institutions participate in the California Public Employees' Retirement…