Opinion

I usually ease off on reading news stories during the time period between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It isn’t that the news is less important, it is just that I find this an ideal moment to just relax and enjoy quality family time. This year was different. I was focused on the cliff, the ominous fiscal cliff.

By Herman Berliner

In August 2012 the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, signed a bill making it mandatory for all federal universities in Brazil to reserve 50% of the places in each degree program for students coming from public schools according to their family incomes and their ethnic profile (self-declared descendants of blacks and Brazilian natives), and giving them four years to implement the programs. Not to be undone, in December of 2012 the governor of the State of São Paulo, Geraldo Alkimin, announced his own affirmative action project for the state universities, calling it a program of “social inclusion with merit”.

By Simon Schwartzman

Our family spent the week between Christmas and New Year's traveling, as we try to do every year. This is partly because, since my mother died, we have no family nearby, and so have no fixed celebration ritual, and partly because it is cheaper to travel when no one else wants to.

By Susan O'Doherty

In Commissioner Jon Leibowitz NYT quote is the salient point: “While not everything Google did was beneficial, on balance we did not believe that the evidence supported an F.T.C. challenge to this aspect of Google’s business under American law.” "Under American Law …"

By Tracy Mitrano

Thank you to the 464 of you that took the time to share your thoughts with us about your reasons for working in higher education, what has surprised you and, for those of you that have been in higher education for a while, what has changed. Here is the first of several posts that will share results from the survey.

By Margaret Andrews and Dayna Catropa

In response to the President's panel on Contingent Labor at the MLA, my own story of how my labor conditions negatively impacted the students' learning environment.

By Lee Bessette

Following the vote of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), to which Augustana College is related, to permit public rites performed by its pastors that celebrate and support committed same-gender relationships, I knew it was only a matter of time before a request would come for use of the college’s chapel by a same-gender couple. I was surprised that it took more than two years, but this fall two such requests arrived.

By Steven Bahls

Academics ask all kinds of questions and make all kinds of judgments about parts of colleagues' or potential colleagues' lives that are irrelevant to their jobs, writes Nate Kreuter. He says it's time to stop.

By Nate Kreuter