FACULTY POSITION: The Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level. Area of specialization: Latin American Development.

The Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level. Area of specialization: Latin American Development. The school has a strong preference for a scholar who specializes in South America, particularly Brazil, with a focus on environment, public health, and/or human development. We welcome applications from all relevant disciplines, including environmental studies, development studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, public health, and international affairs. The position requires commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as research. Publications and exemplary teaching experience required. Ph.D. must be completed by the time of appointment. The expected start date for employment is July 1, 2015. Please submit curriculum vitae, graduate transcripts, samples of written work, teaching and research statements, and three current letters of recommendation electronically at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/4319. Applications must be received no later than October 1, 2014. The Pardee School of Global Studies is committed to multidisciplinary, policy-¬relevant research and teaching. We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Call for Proposals: Short papers for NABE Research & Evaluation SIG

NABE Research & Evaluation SIG 2015 Proposal Submission

We are accepting proposals for short papers to be presented at the NABE 2015 Research & Evaluation Special Interest Group at the annual NABE Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada from March 5-7, 2015.

Please attach an abstract of 150-250 words and a short summary of 50 words (in MS Word) to:  

NABEResearchSig@gmail.com 

and copy to

Victorianlinguist@gmail.com

Be sure to include the language(s) involved in your study or discussion.

(Send questions or concerns to the attention of

Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth at the e-mail addresses above.

While our current theme for the upcoming conference is "Becoming Biliterate," all data-based and theoretical papers on bilingualism, second/foreign language acquisition, intercultural communication, language assessment,  and pedagogy are welcome.

The deadline for submission to the Research and Evaluation SIG is September 21, 2014.

A notice of acceptance status (accepted, waitlisted, not accepted)  will be sent on or about October 1, 2014.

*See additional presenter information, below.

Sincerely,

Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, PhD 

Chair, NABE Research SIG

& Martha Pennington

Co-Chair, NABE Research SIG

Miriam's
office phone: (212) 998-5195
office fax: (212) 995-3636 

Additional information:

Primary Presenter and Co-Presenter(s): 

Please list name, affiliation, e-mails and phone contacts for each presenter. When there is more than one, please identify one individual as the primary presenter.

The following stipulations are conditions of acceptance. By submitting your proposal, you are agreeing to the following terms if you proposal is accepted.

1.2) Primary Presenter Responsibilities: It is the responsibility of all primary presenters to ensure that all secondary presenters on their proposal receive any and all pertinent information regarding the proposal (all notifications will be sent to the email address for the primary presenter) and that all secondary presenters on their proposal comply with all presenter guidelines and submit all required information.

2.1) Conference Registration: NABE does not waive registration fees for presenters. All accepted presenters must be registered for the conference. The deadline for presenter registration is January 5, 2015. If all proposal presenters (including secondary presenters) are not registered by January 5, 2015, the presentation will be cancelled. It is the responsibility of the primary presenter to ensure that all presenters on their proposal are registered for the conference.

3.1) Lodging and Travel: All accepted presenters are responsible for their own lodging and travel. NABE will neither arrange nor provide funding for presenter lodging and/or travel.

4.1) Audio Visual Equipment:

• All presentation rooms will be equipped with an LCD projector, screen, and electrical cables at no cost.
• NABE will NOT provide laptop computers. (Presenters whose proposals are accepted will be provided with contact information for the NABE 2015 On-site Service Provider.)
• NABE will NOT provide DVD and/or other Audio Visual equipment. (Presenters whose proposals are accepted will be provided with contact information for the NABE 2015 On-site Service Provider.)

4.2) Internet Service:

• NABE will NOT provide Internet Service. (Presenters whose proposals are accepted will be provided with contact information for the NABE 2015 On-site Service Provider.)

Journal of Academic Freedom--the intersection of electronic communications and academic freedom, specifically exploring the shifting landscape for academic freedom resulting from the proliferation of social media.

Dear Colleague,

I’m pleased to announce that Volume Five of the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom has just been published. This issue of JAF is focused on the intersection of electronic communications and academic freedom, specifically exploring the shifting landscape for academic freedom resulting from the proliferation of social media. Our intent with this issue is to examine how the advent of sites such as Facebook and Twitter blur the lines that separate areas of research expertise and broader public engagement, often leading to both a facilitation of and impingement on academic freedom.

The bulk of this year’s issue deals with various assaults upon academic freedom, most notably those originating from the increasingly techno-oriented world outside of the classroom that is now permeating the halls of academia. But we also devote a large portion of the issue to examining the systemic threats to our profession, whether it’s assaults on tenure, hiring, and the specter of corporatization that threatens to undermine the very ideals of higher education. 

Hans-Joerg Tiede kicks off the issue with an essay reminding readers that the AAUP was not founded solely to protect academic freedom, but also as an Association determined to democratize institutions of higher education that were being threatened by corporate interests. Tiede’s essay is an extremely timely reminder of the democratizing ideals that animated many of the AAUP’s founders at the time of the organization’s inception.

Kenneth Garcia also looks back to the founding ideals of the AAUP nearly a century ago. For Garcia, the AAUP’s famous statement of principles in 1915 was characterized by a determination to pursue truth in its broadest possible sense. Since then, Garcia argues, the right to seek out knowledge has become increasingly constrained within the narrow confines of specialized disciplinary knowledge.

Next, Richard Teichgraeber takes up the gauntlet thrown down by the 2006 report of the Modern Language Association Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion; chiefly, how to justify the institution of tenure to a non-academic audience. Teichgraeber approaches this challenge through the eyes of a historian, leading him to conclude that tenure cannot consistently be seen as a single concept or policy, uniformly applied across institutions and time. Instead, he argues that tenure should be regarded as a complex set of practices that have evolved very significantly during the last half-century.

Jeffrey Buller examines how the twenty-first century has shaped the culture of higher education, revisiting C.P. Snow’s famous lament concerning the bifurcation of intellectual culture into two antithetical traditions: the sciences and the humanities. If Snow’s diatribe was an attack on the scientific philistinism of the British ruling class, Buller argues that a yawning gap is opening today between those who view a university education as the cornerstone of a democratic society, and those who view it simply as a form of job training or as an economic development program.

Timothy Shiell’s essay is a timely examination of some of the assaults on free speech and academic freedom that have become commonplace in higher education today. Shiell discusses debates about university hate speech policies, which have been unfolding for over thirty years, and uses a hypothetical student Facebook post to examine the forms of discipline that institutions can implement. Despite the fact that broad regulations concerning hate speech on campus have repeatedly been struck down by courts, Shiell notes, most universities still have policies that violate free speech guarantees.

Gerald Turkel’s essay discusses the 2010 suspension of two faculty members after it was concluded that they posed a danger to themselves and their colleagues. The background to this discussion of course is the terrible spate of campus violence of recent years, from Virginia Tech to the University of California, Santa Barbara. While most institutions have developed policies relating to student conduct, Turkel argues, many have yet to articulate clear guidelines for how to cope with faculty members who engage in dangerous or erratic behavior.

Adria Battaglia considers the use of academic freedom as a kind of rhetorical football. Far from being a transparent and universal guarantee of freedom of inquiry, speech, and learning in higher education, academic freedom is a privileged label that grants legitimacy to those who wield it, Battaglia suggests. In particular, Battaglia documents David Horowitz’s campaign with the organization “Students for Academic Freedom” to demonize professors teaching what he views as partisan material.

The final set of three essays included in this volume focus specifically on electronic communications and academic freedom. We lead with an essay by Jonathan Poritz that focuses on the lack of shared governance over a key site of the contemporary university: information technology. Poritz argues that faculty members seldom have any idea about, let alone any input into, decisions regarding this essential domain of university operations.

Next, Jenny Bossaller and Jenna Kammer discuss a related and similarly under-acknowledged area of concern relating to electronic communications. For Bossaller and Kammer, increasingly popular e-textbooks and “courses-in-a-box” constitute a significant threat to academic freedom. Such resources are attractive to administrators since they allow instructors to teach more students for less money. For overworked (and often precarious) professors, they can be seductive because they significantly diminish faculty workload. But, as Bossaller and Kammer relate, there are many negative aspects to these outsourced materials.

This volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom concludes with Dan Colson’s paper discussing the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) policy on the “Improper Use of Social Media.” This policy holds not only that social media such as Facebook and Twitter postings should be put under identical scrutiny as scholarly articles. In addition, since the writing up of scholarly research is part of one’s official duties as an employee of a state university in Kansas, university administrators in Kansas can fire professors if their writings are seen as damaging the interests of the university.

You can read all of the 2014 JAF articles now on the AAUP website, as well as our previous years’ issues.

The challenges to academic freedom today are legion. Indeed, as the essays in this volume of the Journal of Academic Freedom make clear, the foundations of the modern are under unprecedented stress today. During my two-year editorship of JAF, there has been much contention over the definition of academic freedom itself. From debates over academic boycotts to campaigns for and against the firing of faculty for statements on social media, academic freedom is invoked by nearly everyone to justify their antagonistic positions. Given the capaciousness and radical limitations of the concept of academic freedom, the temptation is strong to discount the term entirely as an empty cipher manipulated by whoever has the most power in the university. But this would be a terrible mistake: academic freedom continues to be a vital tool for dissident voices intent on speaking truth to power.

Ashley DawsonEditor, AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom

The mission of the AAUP is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good. Visit the AAUP website and Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

TH 9/11 @ 11:30am - "¡Presente!: Latin@ Immigrant Voices in the Struggle for Racial Justice" book presentation & discussion

Thursday, September 11, 2014 @ 11:30am

¡Presente! book presentation & discussion

MEC - SAC 1.102

https://www.facebook.com/events/713584188707408/

Join contributors Manuel Ramírez and María Duque as well as co-editor Cristina Tzintzún for a special presentation of the book ¡Presente! Light refreshments will be provided. 

¡Presente offers a rare perspective on the immigrant rights movement, written by immigrant workers themselves. Including a range of essays exploring the intersection of race, class, and immigration in the U.S., this anthology challenges its readers to move beyond a "legalization-only" framework and embrace a broader vision for social justice organizing embodied in the work of grassroots organizations across the country resisting state repression, cultivating solidarity, and building alternative models for progressive social change. Offered in a dual-language edition, with a foreword by Democracy Now! co-host Juan González.

For more information, please contact Rocío Villalobos - rocio.villalobos@austin.utexas.edu

California Lawmakers Approve Measure to Repeal Limits on Bilingual Education

By Lesli A. Maxwell on August 29, 2014 11:53 AM, EDUCATION WEEK

A piece of legislation aimed at asking California voters to overturn a 16-year-old state law that restricts the use of bilingual education in California's public schools has made it out of the legislature and now awaits action from Gov. Jerry Brown.

The California State Assembly this week voted in favor of the measure that seeks to repeal Proposition 227, the 1998 voter-approved ballot measure that severely limited the availability of bilingual education programs for the state's large share of students who are still learning English.

If signed by Gov. Brown, voters would get a chance to reconsider whether English-only instruction ought to remain as the predominant approach to educating English-language learners in the state's public schools. The new measure would appear on the November 2016 ballot.

While Proposition 227 was not an outright ban on bilingual education, it had the near effect of eliminating it from public schools. Most school districts either got rid of bilingual education or scaled it back significantly to serve only those students whose parents sought special waivers to keep their children in bilingual programs.

Submission deadline, International Symposium on Bilingualism, September 15, 2014

The International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB10, http://isb10.rutgers.edu/) invites proposals for presentations on any area of multilingualism (including, but not limited to, L1/L2 acquisition, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, education, multilingual societies, etc.).

 

Abstracts for the main session. ISB10 organizers invite proposals regarding original, previously unpublished research results on bilingualism/ multilingualism. Submitters should submit an abstract for a 20 minute presentation or for a poster presented at the main session, or a proposal for a thematic session. Submissions should be uploaded to EasyChair (www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=isb10).

 

Proposals for individual papers or posters consist of:

-An anonymous abstract (500 words plus 1 page max. for examples and references). The abstract should include enough details to allow reviewers to judge the merit of the proposal.

Abstracts for paper/poster presentations will be double-blind peer-reviewed. Authors will be asked to specify a format preference (paper presentation or poster session) at the time the work is submitted.

Only one presentation can be submitted as a first author. One of the authors must register for the conference in order to assure the presentation’s place on the program.

In the submission site, indicate which presentation format you would like your abstract to be considered for. All abstracts are reviewed in the same manner; selecting 'paper or poster' does not decrease one's chances of being selected to deliver a spoken presentation.

 

Proposals for thematic sessions. Thematic sessions consist of 120 minute blocks that will cover a narrowly defined topic of interest. Proposals should be submitted through EasyChair (www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=isb10), check the option “THEMATIC session (group of 3-4 abstracts and proposal submitted by 1 organizer)”

 

Proposals for thematic sessions should include:

-A general abstract describing the colloquium as a whole (max. 500 words). This should go in the “Abstract” field of EasyChair

-A single pdf file with anonymous abstracts for individual presentations (each abstract should be 500 words max. plus 1 page max. for examples and references)

-Individual author information should be submitted in the “author” fields of EasyChair.

Sufficient details should be provided to allow peer reviewers to judge the merit of the proposal. The person submitting a proposal for a colloquium is in charge of securing the permission and co-operation of all participants before the proposal is submitted.

 

Submission deadlines

Individual papers, posters and thematic session proposals: 15 September, 2014

Notification of acceptance: 1 December, 2014

 

Contact email: isb10.contact@gmail.com

 

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT---UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

 POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS 

The Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis invites applicants for a Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Sociolinguistics of bi/multilingualism. The successful candidate will be expected to develop a research program in the sociolinguistics of bi/multilingualism especially in regards to language use, learning, maintenance, and/or attrition in minority language communities, and to contribute to the programs and activities of an interdisciplinary cluster of applied and sociolinguists, as well as educational linguists. S/he should have strong interests in research methodology and ethics appropriate for working in local communities, and a commitment to the research mentorship of students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Possible research specialties include but are not limited to language contact and variation, language socialization, language ideologies, grassroots policy implementation, participatory action research, community language pedagogy, translation and interpretation, language and literacy issues in healthcare, community language media. The appointee will be required to teach courses in sociolinguistics and bi/multilingualism, undergraduate-level courses in general topics in linguistics, and graduate-level courses in areas of specialization. Supervision of graduate students, involvement in curricular development, and performance of university service are expected. A Ph.D. in linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, or a closely related field must be completed by the first day of courses (September 24, 2015). The applicant should have experience and interests related to the sociolinguistics of bi/multilingualism in minority language communities, as well as a strong background in research methods appropriate for working in local communities. 

Applicants should submit: curriculum vitae, a cover letter that clearly states research and teaching interests and background, official graduate transcripts, one writing sample (publication, submitted manuscript, or dissertation chapter), a summary or abstract of the Ph.D. dissertation, and three letters of recommendation through the online application system found at: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu (replace w/live JPF link) 

The position will remain open until filled. Applications received by October 10, 2014 will receive full initial consideration. 

The University of California, Davis, is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer with a strong institutional commitment to the achievement of diversity among its faculty and staff.