Plus: The Wright Brothers In Chicago

“A Northwestern University professor has resigned her position at the Feinberg School of Medicine after, she said, her complaints of academic censorship were ignored,” the Tribune reports.
Alice Dreger, who worked part time as a clinical medical humanities and bioethics professor, initially complained in 2014 that the school dean removed a risque article from a website for the bioethics journal Atrium because of fear it would harm the school’s image.
“The university eventually allowed the essay, called ‘Head Nurses,’ to go back onto the website in May after Dreger said she threatened to take her complaints about school censorship public. But she objected to a newly established ‘oversight committee’ required to review and approve articles before they appear.”

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Posted on August 27, 2015

Plus: The Truth About The Siege Of Vicksburg

Emanuel Announces Citywide STEM Strategy To Triple The Number Of Students With STEM Credentials By 2018.
“Pronouncements like the following have become common currency: ‘The United States is falling behind in a global race for talent that will determine the country’s future prosperity, power, and security.’ In Falling Behind?, Michael Teitelbaum argues that alarms like this one, which he quotes, are not only overblown but are often sounded by people who do not disclose their motives,” Andrew Hacker writes for the New York Review of Books.
“Teitelbaum vehemently denies that we are lagging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, now commonly abbreviated as STEM. Still, he writes that there are facts to be faced:

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Posted on August 20, 2015

Plus: Recovering Attorney Savages Law

“The Chicago Teachers Union is pissed at a Tucson writer – who goes by the pseudonym Gabby Matthews – over a political erotica novel he wrote about a teachers strike that shut down part of Chicago’s public school system for about a week back in 2012,” the Tucson Weekly reports.
“The union has told the author they do not want to be associated with this ‘spanking novel,’ titled The Teacher’s Strike, citing alleged trademark violations, according to the author.
“CTU’s communications director, Stephanie Gadlin, says a fictional Teachers Union logo on a shirt worn by the teacher’s character on the cover should be removed from both print and online copies, because it is way too similar to the union’s actual logo.
“The union also demands that any copies of the book already printed be recalled, a letter from the union’s attorney says.”

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Posted on August 13, 2015

By Steve Rhodes

“In the late 1960s and early ’70s, if you wanted a book by Iceberg Slim, the best-selling black writer in America, you didn’t go to a bookstore. You went to a black-owned barbershop or liquor store or gas station. Maybe you found a copy on a corner table down the block, or being passed around in prison,” Dwight Garner writes for the New York Times.
“The first and finest of his books was a memoir, Pimp: The Story of My Life, published in 1967. This was street literature, marketed as pulp. The New York Times didn’t merely not review Pimp, Justin Gifford notes in Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim. Given the title, this newspaper wouldn’t even print an ad for it.
“Pimp related stories from Iceberg Slim’s 25 years on the streets of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit and other cities. It was dark. The author learned to mistreat women with a chilly elan. It was dirty, so filled with raw language and vividly described sex acts that, nearly 50 years later, the book still makes your eyeballs leap out of your skull, as if you were at the bottom of a bungee jump.”

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Posted on August 7, 2015