Marc Comtois
I heartily recommend reading Andrew’s
In a story by Howard Fineman, Mitch McConnell casts the current political “divisiveness” in its proper historical context: “It’s naive to assume there would be one collection of views widely held by everyone,” he said. “I’m amazed at all this hand-wringing over the level of discourse and partisanship. It leads me to believe nobody has…
In the course of yet another article about bias in our univerisities, William Pilger (a pseudonym), a conservative tenured professor in a southern university, managed to both display the value of a humanities education and the reluctance (and reason) that students show for engaging in any type of classroom discussion that may touch on current…
I became more interested in bias in academia when I re-entered “the academy” to pursue an MA in History (at Providence College). Thankfully, I have not personally felt any real “quashing of dissent.” Although I have heard a few pithy political asides in the course of unrelated lectures, my experience at Providence College has been…
Yesterday I “braved” the rain to vote in a special election that sought to winnow down the candidates for an open school committee seat from 5 to 2. Dr. Saleh R. Shahid and Lucille Mota-Costa emerged as the winners. Shahid is a registered Republican who has unsuccessfully run for both the State Legislature and State…
While visiting The Learning Community Charter School in Pawtucket, Governor Carcieri floated the idea of removing the state’s charter school cap, which limits each school district to two charter schools (except Providence, which is allowed four). Predictably, there are those who disagree with the Governor about removing the cap, even though recent studies have shown…
Last week I noticed a story about a school district in Georgia placing a disclaimer on its high school biology books that stated that “Evolution is a theory, not a fact.” The local tie-in was that the author of the textbook, Kenneth Miller, is a Brown University professor. The ACLU and others have filed to…
Eugene Volokh, a blogger himself, has a piece in today’s New York Times in which he mentions the Taricani case. However, of more importance is the larger question he seeks to address Because of the Internet, anyone can be a journalist. Some so-called Weblogs – Internet-based opinion columns published by ordinary people – have hundreds…
Presiden’t Bush’s much vilified No Child Left Behind Act appears to be working, at least that’s the conclusion drawn from reading this story in today’s Providence Journal. More than half of Rhode Island’s public schools have jumped into the high-performing category, and school leaders across the state say that’s in no small part due to…
