Education: Future Imperfect Contemporary perspectives on education Could Rep. Ken Fredette Have Saved Richard Nixon’s Presidency? An updated version of my May 15, 2015, blog regarding Maine House Minority Leader Ken Fredette as a cowardly blind follower of Gov. LePage and a complete opposite of courageous Maine Republicans Margaret Chase Smith and William Cohen. Like […]

When millionaire Eliot Cutler ran for governor for the second time in 2012, he told voters in one of the debates that UMaine System faculty were both underworked and overpaid. This from a child of privilege whose father was the first Jew to be allowed to practice medicine at Eastern Maine Medical Center. And this […]

New Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently characterized  America’s historically black colleges and universities as pioneers in the school choice crusade that she leads. That our highest federal government official could be so misinformed about the origins of those institutions speaks for itself about her lack of qualifications for her Cabinet post. Nearly all of […]

Back˚ in September 2015 I posted a blog after reading an otherwise forgettable item in Maine newspapers about a lecture delivered by Senator Collins at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. This was an inaugural Distinguished Lecture filled with the usual self-congratulatory rhetoric of Collins’ saintly bi-partisanship. Collins’ brother Sam still chairs the University […]

Years ago, when current University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban was coaching Louisiana State University, an unexpected loss to a supposedly much weaker team–Louisiana State–Monroe—during the regular season so outraged Saban that he made an analogy to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Not literally the same, he acknowledged after even Crimson Tide fans […]

(1) One of the former deans of my UMaine college whom I described as an academic clown in an early BDN blog retired last spring. Too inept to be reappointed to a second term, this person got a highly paid special professorship that was not exactly based on academic merit. Returning to the classroom, this […]

Last Friday “Our Senator” Susan Collins strongly supported her fellow Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama for Attorney General. Notwithstanding the decades-old racist comments that cost him a federal judgeship before being elected to the Senate–and, more recently, notwithstanding Sessions’ fervent opposition to immigration policy reforms and to gay marriage, Collins praised him as a hardworking […]

Over the years, Senator Susan Collins has done wonders in providing crucial funding for many UMaine projects. Although not a UMaine grad, she has understood the importance to UMaine of federal funds. Interestingly, she has done far more in this regard than Olympia Snowe, a UMaine grad, ever did. If Emily Cain’s second attempt to […]

In my American history survey course that covers roughly 1877 till the present, I recently discussed Social Darwinism. That was the deliberate misreading of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to apply to human societies, particularly to public policy. Darwin never intended for his scientific observations and in turn sophisticated theories to be applied to 19th-century […]

Amidst the ongoing controversy over Governor LePage’s refusal to nominate a permanent Commissioner of Education, lest the illustrious William Beardsley be rejected by leftist legislators who don’t appreciate his superb qualifications, let the Governor do what President Ronald Reagan tried to do: simply abolish the entire department. Alas, Reagan wasn’t able to accomplish this and […]