Our County Nursing Home for Sale
(Belden Fields is the Chair of Friends of Champaign County Nursing Home) At its January 9, 2018 meeting, the Champaign County Board decided to put the Champaign County Nursing Home up for sale. All the...
View ArticleThe 1968 Revolt in France: A Fifty-Year Retrospective
In early June, 1968, I witnessed the second round of the student and worker revolt of May and June, but I had been studying student politics in France since 1963. I can only give a sketchy account of...
View ArticleWe Need a Medicare for All Health Care System
The parasitic presence of private insurers in our health care system is one of the things that drives up overall medical costs in the United States, costs that are higher than in any other...
View ArticleRemembering Willeta Donaldson
Urbana has lost one of its most distinguished citizens, Willeta Mae Hassell Donaldson. She passed away on February 2. Willeta, who worked at the University of Illinois in the Office of Admissions and...
View ArticleRight-Wing Libertarian Minor at UI Springfield
In February of 2013, the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS) adopted something called a “Liberty Studies” minor. There was dissent within the academic senate, but the proposal carried the day....
View ArticleHow Are Violent Police Held Accountable in Champaign County?
On April 10, Urbana Police officers threw an African American woman, Aleyah Lewis, to the ground and punched her while she was down. She had protested the arrest of a friend. Caught on video, this led...
View ArticlePolice Unions: Solidarity and Accountability
The Police and Solidarity There are two major differences between police officers and other workers in both the private and public sector. The first is a truncated sense of solidarity, the second a...
View ArticleThe 2021 Illinois Police and Criminal Justice Reform Bill
On February 22, Governor Pritzker signed House Bill 3653. This bill, rather a composite omnibus of many bills, was sponsored by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus in both the Illinois House and...
View ArticleD.J. Trump:Privileged Inciter-in-Chief
The federal anti-riot law (18 U.S. Code § 2101) was originally enacted in 1968 to silence and punish civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists, but has been amended after constitutional challenges...
View ArticleTwo Academic Freedom Cases at the U of I Revisited
Late last year, the University of Illinois Press published Dangerous Ideas on Campus by Matthew Ehrlich. It is an excellent book on two professors at the U of I, one of whom was fired, while the other...
View ArticleAcademic Freedom Cases at the U of I, Part 2
In the October/November issue of the Public i, I discussed two cases in which the University faced pressure to dismiss professors because of their speech or extramural writing. These cases go back to...
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