Good Monday morning. I highly recommend taking some time away. A special welcome to our many new readers. This week’s agenda:
1. Conversation Starters
2. Going Deeper: Social Justice
3. Future of Higher Education
4. Care, Inspiration and Uplift
BREAKING: By the time you read this, the major Division I conferences may have already postponed the fall season… Sources: Power 5 talking about no fall football (ESPN)
Conversation Starters
START YOUR WEEK HERE
- These guys make me smile. A video of two teens listening to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins for the first time went viral this week (the song went to the top of the iTunes charts). They have an entire series; I enjoyed their first time hearing Jolene by Dolly Parton.
- Satire, or is it? Job Posting: Middle School Language Arts Teacher/ Cheerleading Coach/ Custodian/ Nurse/ COVID-19 and Anti-Racism Specialist Wanted (McSweeney’s)
- Trey Kennedy: First World Problems in 2020 (YouTube)
“A CASTE SYSTEM”: COLLEGES ARE DEEPLY UNEQUAL WORKPLACES
Are we ready for this conversation? This article needs some more nuance (tenured and professional track faculty, exempt and non-exempt staff, graduate and undergraduate student labor). Dozens of people posted this article over the last week. Colleges Are Deeply Unequal Workplaces (The Atlantic)
Over the past few months, the pandemic has exposed long-standing fissures in the campus workplace. Faculty and staff occupy two very different worlds—a chasm like few others in the American economy. Though they work for the same employer, faculty, by definition, enjoy more job security and power to shape how the university runs, while campus staff continue to be far more vulnerable.
HOW THE PANDEMIC DEFEATED AMERICA
Highest recommendation (and free). Elicits every negative emotion, from sadness to frustration to helplessness to outright seeing-red anger. How the Pandemic Defeated America (The Atlantic)
Despite its epochal effects, COVID‑19 is merely a harbinger of worse plagues to come. The U.S. cannot prepare for these inevitable crises if it returns to normal, as many of its people ache to do. Normal led to this. Normal was a world ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for one. To avert another catastrophe, the U.S. needs to grapple with all the ways normal failed us. It needs a full accounting of every recent misstep and foundational sin, every unattended weakness and unheeded warning, every festering wound and reopened scar.
- In praise of the semicolon in this piece; he created a 212 word sentence: What helped Ed Yong write the sentence of the year? (Poynter)
- Related: How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era (Rolling Stone)
COVID 101: LET’S TALK ABOUT MASKS
New models show masks could save 70,000 lives by December, but they are so politicized in the U.S. (see Anti-mask protesters explain themselves (Vox). Researchers have conducted studies and determined which masks are the least effective (CNN). The Times reminds us that masks played a role in political and cultural wars in 1918 and 1919 too: The Mask Slackers of 1918.
- Great visual: How America can build herd immunity to the coronavirus (Post)
- “Insinuation anxiety”: Why coronavirus is making us all socially awkward (Vox)
- Experts Predict What Life Will Be Like After A COVID-19 Vaccine Arrives (HuffPost)
MEDIA, SELF, AND SOCIETY
- Instagram morphs into an information powerhouse. “What was once the place to share photos of food and social outings is quickly becoming a hub for information and advocacy.” (Axios)
- Americans are losing faith in an objective media: Gallup/Knight study (Knight Foundation)
- Wow: In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated TV channel in primetime. Not just on cable. Not just among news networks. All of television. This speaks to Fox AND the struggles of broadcast networks.
WHAT WOULD YOUR VERSION LOOK LIKE?
- With appearances from Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington, Mark Ruffalo and more: Reese Witherspoon Has Created A New Meme That All Her Famous Friends Are Doing. (Buzzfeed) (h/t Jess Wilke) Here is Viola Davis’ version:
Going Deeper: Social Justice
GOING DEEPER: Archive of resources since late May: Going Deeper [doc]
BLACK LIVES MATTER
- Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ About Our Abiding Sin (NYTimes)
- Visiting Frederick Douglass's Birthplace on Juneteenth (The Atlantic)
- Black women insist that Biden “write us into history” (19th)
- Terps Head Coach: The dearth of Black coaches in college football is a disgrace. Michael Locksley wants to fix it (Post)
- Breonna Taylor's sister Ju'Niyah Palmer faces lonely grief amid protests (Post)
- Ibram Kendi: Trump's History of Racism and the Reckoning It Has Forced (The Atlantic)
- Pollution Is Killing Black Americans. This Community Fought Back (NYTimes)
UPCOMING #UMDSOLIDARITY EVENTS
Facilitators - 8/13: Dr. Beth Douthirt Cohen, 8/14: Dr. Alice Donlan and Dr. Carlton Green, 8/19: Jazmin Pichardo and Dr. Bridget Turner Kelly
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
- Links to great scholarship being done all over campus: Social Justice Research Roundup (UMD)
- 7 Things That Need To Be Said About Black Trauma In Predominantly White Workplaces (Blavity)
- How to Grow Abolition on Your Campus – 8 Actions (BU) (h/t Sika Wheeler)
- Educators for Justice (Instagram)
ON WHITENESS
- White Christian America Needs a Moral Awakening (Atlantic)
- The Black Lives Matter Movement Hits a Different Kind of Wall. In Portland, when a group of mothers joined the recent protests in solidarity, their spotlight also underscored — for better or worse — the constant presence of the white ally. (Post)
100 YEARS OF 19TH AMENDMENT
- 100 Years Later, These Activists Continue Their Ancestors’ Work (NYTimes)
As Americans mark a century since that struggle, suffragists’ descendants reflect here on the movement’s legacy among Americans of all races, faiths and genders battling for what the suffragists — quoting the president at the time — described as “liberty: the fundamental demand of the human spirit.
- New: The 19th News: Nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.
AMPLIFYING VOICES OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLES
- Siren: Abrupt change to census deadline could result in an undercount of Latino and Black communities (Post)
- Here's What Extreme Heat Looks Like: Profoundly Unequal (NYTimes)
- Special education students are falling behind and losing key skills, parents say (Post)
- We need to talk about what school closures mean for kids with disabilities (Vox)
- Mauna Kea: Native Hawaiians are still fighting to save the sacred mountain (Vox)
UNDER THE RADAR
- Double siren: Trump exploring executive actions to curb voting by mail (Politico)
- Hurricane, Fire, Covid-19: Disasters Expose the Hard Reality of Climate Change (NYTimes)
- Canada's Last Fully Intact Arctic Ice Shelf Collapses (HuffPost)
- Burgers Won't Save the Planet—but Fast Food Might (Wired)
Future of Higher Education
CHOOSE YOUR METAPHOR
- “Our residential campus is a lot like a cruise ship on land.” College Park and DC angle: In college towns and neighborhoods, permanent residents brace for students’ return. (Post)
- "The fall experience on campus will be some combination of a monastery and a minimum security prison." Higher education during a pandemic: Giving it the old college try (CBS News)
(RE)OPENING
- UMD English Prof Matthew Kirschenbaum: Don’t Blame Colleges for the Coming Fall Debacle (Chronicle)
- Mitch Daniels Has Not Changed His Mind (Chronicle)
- Covid Tests and Quarantines: Colleges Brace for an Uncertain Fall (NYTimes)
- To slow COVID spread, colleges turn party killers with new rules (USAToday)
TEACHING AND LEARNING
- Educators need to employ radical compassion during covid-19.
Just submit to the grief. Do not expect to learn everything. You are grieving and distracted but just move forward. You will look back and be astounded at what is possible even in times of grief and struggle…. Find moments of respite and remember why you loved intellectual life to begin with. Find the joy again.
- A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students (Cult of Pedagogy)
- Lessons from a college that has practiced having socially distant classes (IHE)
- What If We Radically Reimagined the New School Year? (Chicago Unheard)
MOVING FORWARD
- After the Pandemic, Higher Education Can't Afford to Go Back to 'Normal' (EdSurge)
- How to Prepare for the Coming Flood of Student Mental-Health Needs (Chronicle)
- A Crusade Against Terrible Advising (Chronicle)
- Students Aren’t Just Leaving Greek Life. They Want to End It (Chronicle)
FINANCES
- Analysis finds hundreds of colleges show serious financial warning signs
- The Biggest Cuts Need to Come From the Top (Chronicle)
(RE)OPENING PLANS: List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall (Chronicle)
SIGH OF THE TIMES: Employees Laid Off or Furloughed by Colleges (Chronicle)
Care, Inspiration and Uplift
CARE
- Tip For Work From Home Parents Home-Schooling Kids During The Pandemic: We All Feel Like We're Failing (Buzzfeed)
- How to handle stress about the school year during coronavirus (Lilly)
Pandemic parody of `Goodnight Moon' to be released in fall (AP)
HERE AND THERE
- Video: Brands that need to be cancelled immediately (YouTube) (h/t Jeany Cadet)
- This Man Decided To Send A Voice Note On LinkedIn And It's The Funniest Message Ever (Buzzfeed)
- Inside the NBA bubble's unofficial wine club (ESPN)
- Katie Ledecky chocolate milk video: Swimmer reveals how she did it (Post)
- Why Is Bob Ross Still So Popular? (Atlantic)
A REMINDER FOR US ALL:
Source: umdadvisorevents@umd.edu
Until next time, be strong and be well.