Should Tenure Be Abolished?

These days tenure for teachers is such a brawl in America’s elementary and secondary schools that it’s easy to forget that it’s more a cornerstone of higher education.  When Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, announced earlier this month that he was leaving the White House to return to the University of Chicago it was a reminder just how strong the ties — and inducements — of university tenure can be, and why it has recently come under fire. At colleges and universities, tenure basically bestows a job for life unless an institution runs out of money.

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Peru’s Airport Siege: A Bad Omen for the New President

If the past few days are any indication of things to come, Peru’s President-elect Ollanta Humala is in for a rough ride when he takes office on July 28. On Saturday, indigenous protesters in the country’s southeast radically upped the stakes in their nearly seven-week campaign against the government’s mining and oil/gas policies by taking over an airport in Juliaca, the business hub of the Puno department

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Essay: ON TRIBALISM AS THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN

THE bitter war in Biafra is a symbol of the continent’s divided soul, and the most discouraging example so far of a profound impasse that is crippling many of Black Africa’s 30 newly independent states. It is an impasse between tribe and nation, which is also a clash between tradition and change, fact and aspiration

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Outsiders vs. Insiders: The Struggle for the Soul of the GOP

“Barack Obama has failed America,” Mitt Romney said unequivocally at his first New Hampshire town meeting, repeating the signature line of his presidential-campaign announcement speech a day earlier. Unequivocal is not a word that traditionally has been associated with the former Massachusetts governor, but that was then, and the retooled edition of candidate Romney is much improved.

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