Yesterday's campus events surrounding the unveiling of the Cesar Chavez statue were very exciting. The red United Farm Workers flag flew on the Main Mall while senators, state representatives, the US Undersecretary of Education honored Chavez's legacy and called for a continued struggled toward racial equality, workers' rights, and social justice. Like the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue on the East Mall, the Chavez statue and the Barbara Jordan statue (set for unveiling in Spring 2009) were the result of student-initiated campaigns and were financed by student fees.

I love Banned Books Week. I love reading the reports each year. There are always the old standards (Judy Blume, Alice Walker), and the new-old standards (the Harry Potter books), and then there are always some surprises.

I know a number of us talk with our classes about UT's campus statuary. I like to take students on a little tour each semester, after looking at materials about the debate.

A particularly interesting document is former UT President Larry Faulker's "Comments on the Report of the Task Force on Racial Respect and Fairness" from May 10, 2004:

http://www.utexas.edu/president/speeches/rrf_051004.html
(See especially paragraphs 46-57)

Right now, I'm teaching a first-year writing class that is affiliated with an interdisciplinary first-year seminar in environmental science. Looking for articles to use in class, I came across this website http://www.counterbalance.net/. I haven't reviewed it in great detail but it seems like a good place to look for academic yet accessible conversations about interesting, contemporary issues.

In this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Michael Berube began to answer a question I didn't realize was nagging me about the liberalization of academia conspiracy: what is actually going on in these classrooms? Berube's argument is, of course, that conservative attacks on dangerous professors are misguided, however validating and exilerating they might be to radical academics. His first major point is that liberalization is really an administrative rather than pedagogic issue to begin with, but it is his second point that relates to pedagogy and that I found most interesting.

Google is making a push to digitize a number of books with their Book Search. This could be a great controversy for those teaching Lessig this semester.

Here's a Washington Post editorial by Richard Ekman about why universities should support Google's efforts.

If you've been following the controversy about teaching 9/11 conspiracy theories at the University of Wisconsin, then this book might be an interesting read.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Parody_of_Al_Gore_Film_tied_0803.html

Though the evolution versus intelligent design debate may perhaps be old news to some of you, I thought it might be interesting to revisit within the context of the new "teaching the controversy" model for RHE 306. I have collected below 3 articles that foreground the very idea of "teaching the controversy" in terms of the controversy between ID proponents and advocates for evolution.

Jim Aune at The Blogora posts this Rolling Stone story about reinstituting the draft. He notes that it might "concentrate the undergraduate mind wonderfully."

It would be interesting to compare this article to some of the discussion of the draft that happened during the 2004 elections.