In addition to the recent link from Inside Higher Ed, which I read daily and for the most part find invaluable, despite occasionally oversimplified coverage of the strike last year and a proclivity for repeatedly giving column space to megalomaniacal NYU administrators, I've also apparently been added to Cliopatria's History Blogroll. Thanks, Cliopatria.

In the past few days I've been getting hits not only from around the country, but Taiwan, Madrid, Guangxi, Heidelberg, Cologne, Buenos Aires, and Melbourne. The internets is a truly wondrous contraption.

I still owe Alek that response, but it'll have to come after tomorrow, because I have the lion's share of Capital Volume 1 to read tonight and the first (G)HOD meeting. Woohoo.

Didn't Levin tell us that Schmoke wanted the painting to stay up?

Guardsmark Overruled.

The NLRB's controversial decision in 2005 to allow an employer ban against off-duty socializing (a death knell for unionization campaigns) has been thrown out in federal court.

From the American Rights at Work Email:

Workers' Rights Watch: Eye on the NLRB - February 5, 2007

The American pastime of happy hour appeared to be doomed when in July 2005, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a dangerous precedent-setting decision to allow employers to ban “off-duty fraternizing” among co-workers. In our outrage we publicized the ruling, which eventually sent shockwaves far beyond the labor law community. Professors, journalists, bloggers, privacy and workers’ rights advocates, lawyers, and workers themselves could all agree that the Republican majority of the Board went too far in its decision severely weakening the rights of free speech and association, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.

Yet this ‘Big Brother’ ruling was just overturned by the DC Circuit Court, which ruled that an employer's ban on "fraternizing" was illegal because employees would construe it as a ban of union or concerted activity—and not just socializing—outside of work hours.*

While we should all meet up after work to celebrate this decision, it's a sad day when the when a higher court has to save workers' rights from destruction from the agency created to protect them.

Herrenvolk Plutocracy, or It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like GATTACA

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

The law has strong support from crime victims’ organizations and some women’s groups, who say it will help law enforcement identify sexual predators and also detect dangerous criminals among illegal immigrants.

Shocking, I know, but today's WSN is actually pretty interesting. First, one editor/columnist has it out with NYU's model for becoming a global university: (which consrtis of - what else - buying real estate.)

I experienced NYU in London, so I can say with certainty that there was nothing global or multicultural about it. Students don't get the option to find a flat, so I was crammed into a British take on an NYU dorm with four other American women. It was really nice, and I got on well with my roommates, but that's beside my main gripe. We all went to classes in one central building - it was something like NYU High. This academic center was located in a really posh townhouse on gorgeous Georgian Bedford Square, but it wasn't an English university or even a simulacrum of an English university. It was very nice, but between living and learning with American NYU students, my horizons were hardly expanded.

To me, this system feels like colonization: NYU goes abroad to share its ideas with the locals, and NYU students do their part for university PR while failing to be tainted by another culture that could turn them against their alma mater. I realize that's insane, but it occurred to me repeatedly as I thought about it: Students don't need to study at an NYU in Elsewhere to become acculturated. Cynics have pointed out that NYU study abroad sites are great cash cows. I asked Nyarko if these sites turn a profit. His answer? "We don't seek to make a profit." Reassuring, I suppose, but evasive nevertheless.

Now, I don't necessarily think NYU should dump its own sites; plenty of students adore the unadventurous option. But for the love of God, please make it possible for students to take a semester or two away without having to take a leave of absence. Exploring something new for a year doesn't compromise our loyalty to the NYU brand and even if it did, that's no excuse to prevent anyone from trying new things.

Also, I hate this language of globalization. It is not NYU's duty to take up the white man's burden or make money on these endeavors - we're a nonprofit. Nyarko and NYU President John Sexton are both correct when they claim that globalization can't be held back, but NYU should simply continue to distinguish itself: They will come to us, no colonization necessary.

Plus, the price of birth control at NYU Health Services more than doubles, and NYU is one of 60 schools fingered in the AG's probe of the relationships between financial aid offices and the outside lenders to which they refer students.

Digital Diploma Mills Are The New Pornography, or Casualization Gets Mass Romantic

I just saw a new tv commercial for the University of Phoenix, an entirely online university which relies on a hypercasualized, hypercontingent labor force of teahcers and graders who never meet their students. This commercial utilized the chorus of the New Pornographers' "Bleeding Heart Show," specifically the innocous-sounding "Hey-Na" part.

There's obviously some serious irony here. Beyond that, I'll leave off deeper analysis in favor of reader interjection. So, dear reader, I ask you, WTF?

Nerds has the latest on the interim grievance nonsense from the administration. Anyone interested in just how great the university's failure to address these grievances a year after they were filed need only to look at this latest confused, self-contradicting dismissal handed down by a vice dean. It's barely readable.

I want to post a more detailed response to the issues Alek raised in the comments on the last post, but I've been exhausted all weekend since helping friends move a very heavy refrigerator and many extremely heavy book boxes up three flights of stairs Thursday afternoon, and haven't felt much like blogging.